Using Student Interviews to Probe Kids' Mathematical Thinking

            In this article in Mathematics Teacher, Nicora Placa (Hunter College) remembers, as a new teacher, looking over a student’s shoulder and spotting this problem: 1/3 + 1/4 = 2/7 Here was the ensuing conversation: 

    - Teacher: I see you added the numerators and denominators. Are those the same size pieces?   

    - Student: Yes? 

    - Teacher: Are you sure those pieces are the same size? 

    - Student: Um. No? 

    - Teacher: Good! So, what do we do if they aren’t the same size? 

    - Student: Um… 

    - Teacher: I’ll give you a hint. We worked on it yesterday. We need to find… 

    - Student: The same size? 

    - Teacher: Yes. We need to find common… 

    - Student: Ummmmmm… denominators? 

    - Teacher: Yes. Very good! We need to find common denominators. Why don’t you review the notes from yesterday on how to find the common denominator and then redo this? 

“I did this with the best of intentions,” says Placa, “thinking I was helping the student. I truly believed that with some prompting or a hint, they would remember what to do. I did not understand that I was dragging them through a solution path that made sense to me instead of trying to understand how they were thinking about the task… I was not hearing all the interesting ways students thought about the problem, and I misunderstood their ideas.” 

            A little later in her career, Placa learned the value of student interviews and began to approach conversations with students in a different way – even when their answers were correct. “When conducting these interviews, I began listening to students with the goal of making sense of what they were doing,” she says. “It was eye-opening. I was able to learn about the different strategies that students brought to the problem and, in turn, change my responses in the classroom… I became fascinated by all the ways students thought about problems and started to build on these conceptions to design instruction.” 

            Using this approach, here’s how Placa would handle the conversation with a student who had written this incorrect solution: 1/3 + 1/4 = 2/7 

    - Teacher: Can you tell me how you got your answer? 

    - Student: Is it wrong? 

    - Teacher: I don’t know. Why don’t you explain it to me, and we will try to figure it out together? 

    - Student: Well, here you have one of three things, and here you are adding one out of four things, so basically you now have two of seven things. 

     - Teacher: Interesting. Can you try using these manipulatives or a drawing to show me another way to solve it? 

“With this change in questioning,” says Placa, “I could see how this solution made sense to students if they thought of a fraction as two distinct whole numbers and not as a quantity itself. Listening to students’ thinking made me rethink the ‘out of’ fractions language I was using when introducing fractions and whether I was sufficiently allowing students to explore a variety of models. I revisited activities that explored the concept of fractions as a quantity before I tried to address the addition of fractions.”

            When she became a math coach, Placa became an advocate of student interviews, and Let’s ask a kid! became her mantra. She encourages teachers to anticipate different ways students might solve challenging problems, interview individual students outside of regular class time, and choose effective questions to probe kids about their solutions. She counsels teachers to avoid responses like: 

    - That’s right!

    - You know that if you just…

    - Remember what we did in class last week…

    - And --- is just another way to say ---.

    - Do you mean…? 

Instead, she helps teachers use interview questions like these:

• General probing questions: 
• What did you notice? 
• Why did you write (or draw) that?
• You wrote ---. Why? How did that help you?
• I noticed that you stopped what you were doing just now (or erased or crossed something out). What were you thinking?
• I don’t know what you mean by that. Can you explain? 
• Questions about alternative solution paths:
• Can you solve it in a different way? Tell me about it.
• Can you use a picture (or tool) to represent your thinking? Show me.
• Another student said the solution was ---. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
• Questions about explaining and justifying solutions:
• How do you know?
• How did you figure that out?
• How sure are you of your answer? Why?
• Can you justify your work with these manipulatives?
• Is there another way to justify your work? What is it? 

“When teachers carefully listen to and make sense of students’ thinking,” says Placa, “they can design instruction that is tailored to students’ current understanding. Through student interviews, coaches can help teachers to develop these skills in one-on-one situations and then transfer them to their work in the classroom.” Some good questions for teacher team meetings:

- What did you notice about the student’s thinking?

- In what ways do the student’s explanations make sense?

- What different conceptions do you notice the student has?

- What types of questions help uncover the student’s thinking?

- What questions are less helpful?

- What instructional moves might be helpful if we notice these ideas in our classrooms?

- What implications does this have as we plan instruction going forward? 

 “Let’s Ask a Kid! Conducting Student Interviews” by Nicora Placa in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, December 2024 (Vol. 117, #12, pp. 900-906); Placa can be reached at np798@hunter.cuny.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1067 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Centering Hope in the Social Studies Curriculum

            In this article in Social Education, Li-Ching Ho (University of Wisconsin/Madison) and Keith Barton (Indiana University) worry that the world’s problems – political division, mistrust of leaders, racism, poverty, hunger, disease, war, refugees, climate change – may lead K-12 students to be pessimistic, even despairing, about the future. “To counter this,” say Ho and Barton, social studies educators “must provide students a sense of hope – a belief that a better world is possible, and that human action makes a difference.” 

            Implicit in history, geography, and civics classes, they believe, is a focus on hope: “Embedded within the curriculum is an assumption that by providing young people with the necessary skills, knowledge, and dispositions, they will be positioned to help their communities address societal issues and imagine a different and better future.” But Ho and Barton wonder if this emphasis has been explicit enough: “Even when dealing with potentially hopeful content – such as successful social movements – we may fail to highlight its relevance for today.” They believe social studies should embed hopeful content about possibilities, goals, and pathways at a pragmatic and visionary level.

• Pragmatic hope – This curriculum strand would embody the belief that a better future can be attained through strategies that are currently available, with a focus on making a positive difference in people’s lives today. Students might study:
• Possibilities – Successful social movements such as women’s suffrage, civil rights, farmworkers, industrial safety, LGBTQ rights; 
• Goals – Ways to target specific areas of progress in a reasonable timeframe – for example, reducing childhood hunger; 
• Pathways – Understanding strategies that bring about social change – for example, a coalition that made helped restore the Louisiana coastline.
• Visionary hope – “At the core of visionary hope,” say Ho and Barton, “is a belief that the world can be very different than it is.” Looking far beyond present-day realities, students might engage in big-picture thinking about an ideal future, moving beyond conditions that are taken as givens today:
• Possibilities – Students might study how the Harlem Renaissance affected art and culture in the U.S. 
• Goals – Students might consider grand ideals that people have held throughout history – for example, less-exploitative economic arrangements, more-equitable gender relations, greater harmony between people and nature.
• Pathways – “Utopian has gotten a bad reputation as synonymous with ‘impossible,’” say the authors. “Visionary hope must engage students in thinking about how to achieve a different society. Helping students think through how to get from here to there is a corrective to feelings of inevitability.” Women’s suffrage is a good example. 

“Without a deeper and more-complete understanding of visionary goals,” say Ho and Barton, “students may fail to see what it would mean to apply them. And without exploring the rationales behind such goals, students may abandon their beliefs in the face of public opinion or self-interest.” 

            The authors add three cautionary notes. First, they say, “Centering hope does not mean simplifying or romanticizing social change, whether past or present. Social movements are complicated, and their intricacies cannot be ignored in a misguided attempt to make them more inspirational.” The U.S. civil rights movement wasn’t linear or straightforward, nor has it been completely successful. A hope-oriented curriculum needs to delve into such complexities lest we leave students with “false hope.”

            Second, teachers need to make good decisions on the case studies they use to teach about hope – and in the current political climate, some choices will be controversial. “Teaching for hope does not make potential controversies go away,” say Ho and Barton; “dedicated teachers still have to be ready to defend their choices.”

            Finally, the authors believe hope must be central to the curriculum, not an occasional add-on. “Occasional hopeful examples will have limited impact on students’ imagination,” they say. “Centering hope requires consistently and systematically studying hopeful prospects for addressing many different social issues, at a variety of scales and in different settings.” 

            “Despair is central to the thoughts and feelings of many people these days, whether young people or adults,” conclude Ho and Barton. “Schools must counter this sense of despair – not romantically, not simplistically, but forcefully. This means focusing our efforts to provide a foundation for both pragmatic and visionary hope: realistic and successful struggles to improve the world, and the idealistic visions that guide and motivate effective action.” 

 “Centering Hope in Social Studies Education” by Li-Ching Ho and Keith Barton in Social Education, November/December 2024 (Vol. 88, #6, pp. 334-340); the authors can be reached at liching.ho@wisc.edu and kcbarton@iu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1067 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

A High School Student Schools His Father

            In this Kappan article, teacher/instructional coach/writer Steven Goldman says that for four years, he commuted to his school in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his teenage son Theo, who attended the school. Since the drive took 60-90 minutes, they had plenty of time to talk (and listen to his son’s music selections). Goldman says Theo’s observations about the school have been the best professional development of his career. A few examples: 

• Teachers slow to return students’ work – Theo says teachers shouldn’t ask students to take on new tasks until they’ve given feedback on the previous assignment. 
• Student bravado – Theo told his history teacher that he’d blown off studying for a test when in fact he had put in the time. The alternative to lying, he told his father, was “to admit that I’m [expletive] stupid.” 
• Lesson plan “menus” with fun “dessert” options – “All this means,” said Theo, is that I will never get to do anything interesting because I work slowly.”
• The “dyslexia tax” – Theo has a mild learning disability and some executive function challenges, and says he is often unfairly marked down on tests. “School is a minefield for kids who do not fit our stereotypes of the ‘good student,’” says Goldman. 
• Seen as lazy – “I can’t begin to count the number of times that teachers have assumed that he wasn’t trying or didn’t really care based on small mistakes that are a real challenge for him to avoid,” says Goldman. “Believing that you know a student well enough to judge them for inadequate ‘effort’ is arrogance. Unfortunately, it is something I know I did often as a teacher. Theo helped me see that.” 
• Unhelpful teacher judgments – One wrote “Good grief” in the margin for a spelling error, another took points off for an assignment left at home. “Feedback should be about how someone can improve,” says Goldman, “not about making them feel like they aren’t measuring up.”
• Student support – Four years ago when he moved from middle school to high school, Theo commented on a difference he noticed in the educators: “The real difference is that some teachers are on your side and some really aren’t.” 

            “I don’t know of a better definition of what makes someone a good teacher,” says Goldman. “If someone is on your side, both of you are working toward the same goal. Being on a student’s side is not simply giving help or being sensitive to who they are. It is less about whether they measure up to your standards and more about conveying your belief in their capability of achieving their own. It is a mindset that allows the vulnerability necessary for learning to happen.” 

            Theo went off to college this year and Goldman is making the commute alone. “I feel pretty certain that he will never choose education as a career,” he says, “which is fine. But he’s been a teacher, nonetheless. We all learn so much from our children. I feel lucky that one of the things I learned from mine was how to be a better teacher.” 

“The Person Who Taught Me the Most About Teaching Just Graduated from High School” by Steven Goldman in Kappan, December 2024/January 2025 (Vol. 106, #4, p. 48); Goldman can be reached at arthurstevengoldman@gmail.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1067 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Peter Liljedahl on "Thinking Classrooms"

            In this Kappan interview with Kathleen Vail, Peter Liljedahl (Simon Fraser University, Canada) discusses the details of Building Thinking Classrooms. Some key points:

• The difficulty of getting kids thinking – Twenty years ago, at the beginning of Liljedahl’s research, a middle-school math teacher asked him for help teaching complex problem-solving (she was getting students ready for impending changes in Canada’s curriculum expectations). Working together for a week, says Liljedahl, “it was disaster after disaster after disaster.” Why? Because even though students seemed to be working hard and the teacher was running the class well, the standard I do, we do, you do lesson structure resulted in most students mimicking the teacher, stalling, faking, or spinning their wheels. Very few of them were actually thinking, so it was difficult for them to solve challenging problems.
• Problems with standard math lessons – Observing math classes around the world, Liljedahl noticed that almost everywhere, lessons began with a teacher explanation, then students tried a problem, the teacher clarified, then there was independent work and an assessment. Another universal feature, even in classes trying various innovations: the teacher was standing and writing on a vertical surface, students were sitting down and writing on horizontal surfaces. Everywhere he went, Liljedahl noticed that only about 20 percent of students were thinking (about 20 percent of the time) and there was generally a low level of intellectual engagement.
• Restructuring classroom norms – He realized that to change this dynamic – which has been a feature of math classes for almost two centuries – the usual lesson pattern had to be shaken up. He proposed a radically different structure within the four walls of classrooms and the standard bell schedule:
• Giving students an engaging thinking task they couldn’t solve by mimicking or faking;
• Getting students started with only a brief launching introduction from the teacher;
• Having students work in randomly selected groups of three (two in the primary grades);
• Having groups work standing up, using one marker to write on erasable whiteboards;
• The teacher circulating and giving hints, support, and additional challenges as needed. 

“This is a massive revision to the way a classroom normally functions,” says Liljedahl. “In the institutional, normative structure of school, the teacher says, ‘Let me show you how to do it. Now you do it.’ That sets up mimicking. In a thinking classroom, the teacher says, ‘I’m going to give you a task. You’re going to have to think about it, so I’m not going to do it first.’” 

• Why visibly randomized groups – Trying out various strategies, Liljedahl and his colleagues found that even if students were told the groups were chosen at random, they assumed the teacher had formed each group with a “smart” student who was expected to do the real work. In this case, or when students were allowed to choose their own groupmates, most were unlikely to offer an idea because they thought their role was to follow. But when students saw that groups were truly random (using playing cards or another visibly random process), the researchers found that within three weeks, 100 percent of students were likely or highly likely to offer an idea. Truly random grouping told students that the teacher thought they were capable of making a real contribution and they did.
• Why erasable surfaces – With whiteboards (or glass surfaces), students were more likely to get started with ideas knowing they could erase mistakes. With flip chart paper, on the other hand, students thought, “We don’t know what the answer is yet, so we can’t put anything down.” Without knowing that their work was perfect, many students didn’t write anything, and there was a negative feedback loop on problem-solving and creativity.
• Why vertical surfaces – Liljedahl and his colleagues tried a number of configurations and found that having students work standing up was by far the most effective. When students were sitting down facing each other, even if they were using small erasable whiteboards, the work was oriented toward the student who was writing, making that person the leader. With a vertical surface, everyone in the group was facing the work, creating a more collaborative dynamic. Each group’s work was also visible to students around the classroom, enhancing “knowledge mobility” – students could see common errors and good ideas spread from group to group. And the teacher was more aware of what was going on and could push in with just-in-time interventions, versus waiting till the quiz on Friday to see who understood.
• Students feeling visible – “It turns out that when students are sitting,” says Liljedahl, “they feel anonymous. The further they sit from the teacher, the more anonymous they feel. When students feel anonymous, they are more likely to disengage. And the more anonymous they feel, the more likely they are to disengage. Standing up took away that anonymity, and not in a way that made students feel exposed. I’m not anonymous, and I’m not invisible. If I’m not invisible, I’m less likely to disengage. This was a huge shift.” 
• The teacher’s role – The first order of business is choosing tasks wisely, then launching the lesson in a way that reminds students of key skills but leaves the real work to each group, then cruising around the room intervening strategically. “This group needs a hint,” says Liljedahl. “This group needs to talk to another group. This group needs a little bit of direct instruction on this, and this group needs an extension.” Then in the last one-third of the lesson, the class sits down to consolidate learning, students take notes “for my future forgetful self,” and everyone does a quick formative assessment that tells the teacher the level of mastery. 
• Curriculum coverage and innovation – “We cover tremendous amounts of content,” says Liljedahl. “Because the kids are thinking, so much learning can happen. When they’re not thinking, everything is difficult. It takes a long time and they don’t retain it… Imagine how hard teaching and learning is in a space like that, versus where 93% of students are thinking for 100% of the time. Just think about how much more learning can happen in those spaces.” He also believes that other pedagogical innovations are much more likely to get traction in Thinking Classrooms because the radical changes in classroom structure get students collaborating, engaging with the content, and thinking. 

“Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: A Conversation with Peter Liljedahl” by Kathleen Vail in Kappan, December 2024/January 2025 (Vol. 106, #4, pp. 32-35); for other articles on Thinking Classrooms, see Memos 976, 992, 1013, and 1052. Liljedahl can be reached at peter@buildingthinkingclassrooms.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1066 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Books About Social Activism for Young Readers

            In this article in Social Studies and the Young Learner, Iowa preschool teacher Taylor Marsho and five colleagues recommend books that several teachers used to explore issues of injustice, affirm students’ identities, and link activism to students’ artwork. In the course of this curriculum unit, teachers asked students:

• How can you help a friend with a problem they are facing?
• “Big ideas need big plans.” What is something you would like to do to make our classroom better?
• What can you do to treat others the way they want to be treated?
• When you try to make big, important changes in the world, sometimes people will think differently of you. How can you keep going to make change? 

Here are the books, which sparked lively discussions and student artwork on the questions:

• All the Way to the Top by Annette Bay Pimentel about Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins’s fight for the Americans with Disabilities Act;
• Mary Wears What She Wants by Keith Negley about women’s rights activist Mary Edwards Walker;
• Kamala and Maya’s Big Day by Meena Harris about how the young Kamala Harris and her sister Maya Harris advocated for transforming an empty apartment courtyard into a playground;
• The Youngest Marcher by Cynthia Levinson about how nine-year-old Audrey Faye Hendricks protested segregation laws in Alabama. 

“Promoting Student Activism Through Children’s Literature and Social Justice Art” by Taylor Marsho, Ashtyn Riley, Deidra Rudd, Morgan Schmidt, Sunah Chung, and Sarah Montgomery in Social Studies for the Young Learner, November/December 2024 (Vol. 37, #2, pp. 5-10); Marsho can be reached at taylor.marsho16@gmail.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1065 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

I Am On My Way!

 Posted on Facebook by S. Bear Bergman

            My feed today on BlueSky included a post from Icelandic writer Hildur Knútsdóttir, who saw the original exchange on a Reykjavik Facebook page - someone posted to say that it appeared a cygnet was frozen to the ice and dying. As people worried online about how or whether it would be possible to help, naturalist Kerstin Langerberger replied to the post, saying: “I am on my way with the necessary equipment.” Langenberger brought a friend, some thermoses of warm water, and a surfboard in case the ice failed - the necessary equipment - and thawed then freed the baby swan, which promptly flew off.

            There are a number of things I appreciate about this story, but it’s Langenberger’s statement that resonates for me. That is what I aspire to, to see injury or difficulty or something gone to trouble and decide: I am on my way with the necessary equipment. But also, to hold on to the understanding that sometimes the necessary equipment is the resolve to try and a friend who will help, and that sometimes I am the necessary equipment - the friend who shows up to make myself useful under the direction of an expert.

            There are a lot of moments these days that I find it very, very hard to do the next thing, or indeed to do anything. The world is so, so difficult. I often feel useless or overwhelmed or exhausted or just really fucking sad. But I am going to try starting the days by saying, with all the starch that I imagine a naturalist willing to chance the ice in darkness to save a baby bird might possess: I am on my way with the necessary equipment.

Using Word Games and Puzzles in Elementary Classrooms

            In this article in The Reading Teacher, Mark Lauterbach (Brooklyn College) and Marcy Zipke (Providence College) say that playing online word games and puzzles helps elementary students recognize and manipulate phonemes, words, and phrases – a.k.a. metalinguistic awareness. This is an important component of skilled reading; research shows that paying attention to the details of language – phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics, and syntax – improves students’ decoding, spelling, and comprehension. 

            “Developing students’ interest and motivation for uncovering language conventions is an important part of a teacher’s job,” say Lauterbach and Zipke. “Word games and puzzles are uniquely suited for this, in that they can be solved individually, or in groups of any size. They can be tailored to specific student needs, or in support of the curriculum. Additionally, some students find them particularly engaging.” Playing with word puzzles and games also makes students’ thinking about language less rigid and more fun. 

            Lauterbach and Zipke experimented with the use of three New York Times games – Wordle, Spelling Bee, and Connections – with elementary students. Brief descriptions:

• Wordle – The goal is to find a 5-letter mystery word in six or fewer tries. With each guess, the correct letters turn green (right letter, right position) or yellow (right letter, wrong position).
• Spelling Bee – This is a puzzle with seven spaces for letters, six of them encircling one target letter. The goal is to make as many words using the central letter and as many of the other letters as possible. Letters can be used more than once, with extra points for words that use all the letters.
• Connections – The reader is presented with 16 seemingly disparate words and asked to group them into four categories – for example: break, holiday, leave, and recess (time off); holy, wholly, holey, and holi (sound the same, different spellings and meanings); ink, range, lack, and old (colors with their initial letters missing). Four mistakes are allowed. 

With elementary students, the authors found it was helpful to start by modeling playing the game and thinking out loud about different strategies – in Wordle, for example, what letter to start with, how to proceed with a green or yellow letter, strategy with double letters, and so on. Then the class plays the game together, with “gentle feedback” as they proceed, scaffolding, and gradual release of responsibility.

            Where might word games fit into the school day? Some possibilities: in the 15 minutes before lunch; during a brain break; during indoor recess or free time; sending them home as homework; or creating a puzzle center for choice time. For resources, students might use dictionaries, word walls, and brainstorming friends, with Google and Siri off limits. An additional activity might be taking advantage of websites that allow users to create their own versions of Wordle, Spelling Bee, and Connections. And there are plenty of technology-free options, including putting letters on the board and challenging students to make as many words as they can from the letters. 

            “These puzzles and games are an opportunity to create engagement around activities that promote metalinguistic awareness,” conclude Lauterbach and Zipke. “However, as engaging and useful as these puzzles and games are, they are in no way systematic or comprehensive enough to replace the scope and sequence of a research-based reading curriculum.” 

“Wordling with Elementary Students: Developing Discrete Literacy Skills Through Puzzles and Word Games” by Mark Lauterbach and Marcy Zipke in The Reading Teacher, November/December 2024 (Vol. 78, #3, pp. 195-201); the authors can be reached at mlauterbach@brooklyn.edu and mzipke@providence.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1064 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

David Brooks on Rethinking the Meritocracy

            In this article in The Atlantic, David Brooks says the American “social ideal” from the late 1800s to the 1950s was a well-bred graduate of Harvard, Princeton, or Yale – “good-looking, athletic, graceful, casually elegant, Episcopalian, and white.” These men had a smooth pathway to high-paying jobs, power, and even the White House. “People living according to this social ideal,” says Brooks, “valued not academic accomplishment but refined manners, prudent judgment, and the habit of command. This was the age of social privilege.” 

            Then a small group of college presidents, led by James Conant at Harvard, decided that if the U.S. was to prosper and lead in the 20th century, it could no longer be ruled by this narrow, inbred aristocracy. Instead, admission to elite universities should be based on intelligence, with the aim of creating a brainy elite drawn from across the nation. “At least half of higher education, I believe,” said Conant, “is a matter of selecting, sorting, and classifying students.” He and other educators trusted IQ tests to identify this cognitive elite. 

            When a few selective universities adopted this mindset, says Brooks, the effect was “transformative, as though someone had turned on a powerful magnet and filaments across wide swaths of the culture suddenly snapped to attention in the same direction. Status markers changed” – and so did family life. Many parents tried to raise children who could get into selective colleges, “ferrying their kids from one supervised skill-building, résumé-enhancing activity to another. It turns out that if you put parents in a highly competitive status race, they will go completely bonkers trying to hone their kids into little avatars of success.” Most working-class parents, on the other hand, let their kids be kids, free to wander and explore.

            K-12 schools changed as well, cutting down on recess, art, shop, and home economics and spending more time on testing and Advanced Placement classes. “The good test-takers,” says Brooks, “get funneled into the meritocratic pressure cooker; the bad test-takers learn, by about age 9 or 10, that society does not value them the same way.” The upper end of the job market followed suit; a 2024 study showed that 54 percent of high-achieving lawyers, artists, scientists, business and political leaders had attended the same 34 elite colleges. Recruiters across the board were obsessed with college prestige. In short, Conant’s dream of an aristocracy of intelligence became a reality.

            But do we have a better elite? The earlier WASP aristocracy “helped produce the Progressive Era, the New Deal, victory in World War II, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the postwar Pax Americana,” says Brooks. “After the meritocrats took over in the 1960s, we got the quagmire of Vietnam and Afghanistan, needless carnage in Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, the toxic rise of social media, and our current age of political dysfunction. Today, 59 percent of Americans believe that our country is in decline, 69 percent believe that the ‘political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people,’ 63 percent think experts don’t understand their lives, and 66 percent believe that America ‘needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful.’”

            That’s the zeitgeist, and it’s difficult for parents to pull out of the rat race; their kids might get passed by the tiger mom’s kids next door. Teachers must teach to the tests, striving students focus on their GPAs instead of something they’re passionate about, and college admissions officers are prisoners of the U.S. News and World Report rankings. “In other words,” says Brooks, “we’re all trapped in a system that was built on a series of ideological assumptions that were accepted 70 or 80 years ago but that now look shaky or just plain wrong.”

            Here are what he considers the six deadly sins of the U.S. meritocratic ethos, each accompanied by a Brooks quote:

• It overrates intelligence. “If you rely on intelligence as the central proxy for ability, you will miss 70 percent of what you want to know about a person.”
• Success in school is not the same thing as success in life. “We train and segregate people by ability in one setting, and then launch them into very different settings.”
• The game is rigged. “As the meritocracy has matured, affluent parents have invested massively in their children so they can win in the college-admissions arms race.”
• The meritocracy has created an American caste system. “As in all caste societies, the inequalities involve inequalities not just of wealth but of status and respect.” There are troubling disparities in divorce, health, longevity, opioid addiction, and loneliness.
• The meritocracy has damaged the psyches of the American elite. “The system has become so instrumentalized – How can this help me succeed? – that deeper questions about meaning or purpose are off the table, questions like: How do I become a generous human being? How do I lead a life of meaning? How do I build good character?”
• All this has provoked a populist backlash that is tearing our society apart. “Many people who have lost the meritocratic race have developed contempt for the entire system, and for the people it elevates. This has reshaped national politics” – not just in the U.S. but in France, Turkey, Hungary, and Venezuela.

In short, says Brooks, “James Conant and his colleagues dreamed of building a world with a lot of class mixing and relative social comity; we ended up with a world of rigid caste lines and pervasive cultural and political war.”

            So what is to be done? Moving away from meritocracy is not going to happen, says Brooks; throughout human history, every society has been hierarchical. “What determines a society’s health,” he believes, “is not the existence of an elite, but the effectiveness of the elite, and whether the relationship between the elites and everybody else is mutually respectful… The challenge is not to end the meritocracy; it’s to humanize and improve it… The crucial first step is to change how we define merit… Having a fast mental processor upstairs is great, but other traits may do more to determine how much you are going to contribute to society.” Brooks would like us to focus more on four human qualities:

• Curiosity – Kids between 14 months and five years old make about 107 inquiries an hour, but schools tend to stamp out kids’ natural curiosity. Why? Brooks believes it’s because of standardized tests, which push teachers to march through a test-aligned curriculum. This narrow focus produces a lifelong disadvantage, he believes. We need to allow more play and ability for children to keep being curious and pursue their passions. 
• A sense of drive and mission – An important quality that needs to be uncovered and nurtured in the young is purpose beyond themselves. Perhaps that will be indignation at injustice, compassion for the disadvantaged, the pursuit of new knowledge, creating something beautiful. 
• Social intelligence – “In an effective meritocracy,” says Brooks “we’d want to find people who are fantastic team builders, who have excellent communication and bonding skills… players who have that ineffable ability to make a team greater than the sum of its parts.” These non-cognitive skills – listening, empathy, communication – are just as important as technical brilliance. 
• Agility – This is the ability to size up the different aspects of a situation, see the flow of events, and make good decisions about what to do next. High-IQ experts are seldom good at this, says Brooks, but agile thinkers “can switch among mindsets and riff through alternative perspectives until they find the one that best applies to a given situation.”

            In short, says Brooks, “If we can orient our meritocracy around a definition of human ability that takes more account of traits like motivation, generosity, sensitivity, and passion, then our schools, families, and workplaces will readjust in fundamental ways.” He admires schools like High Tech High where students are immersed in project-based learning, skilled teachers act more as coaches of learning than purveyors of knowledge, and achievement is measured by portfolios of students’ best work – papers, speeches, projects – defended in face-to-face presentations to a committee of adults and peers.               Brooks also wants us to redefine the nation’s “opportunity structure – the intersecting lattice of paths and hurdles that propel people toward one profession or way of life and away from others.” Right now, he says, our opportunity structure is too narrow, channeling kids through one bottleneck after another to achieve elite status: high grades, good test scores, college and graduate degrees. Better to have “opportunity pluralism,” where young people have a broader range of pathways and we have not a single pyramid but a mountain range with many possible peaks of achievement. Brooks suggests four ways to achieve this:

• Prioritize career and technical education – “Schools should prepare people to build things, not just to think things,” he says.
• Make national service a rite of passage after high school, which will build friendships across class lines as young people make real contributions to society.
• Invest more in local civic groups and community organizations where young people can serve others, lead meetings, rally neighbors for a cause.
• Support economic policies like the CHIPS and Science Act to boost the U.S. industrial sector and provide jobs for those who don’t want professional and office jobs.

            Brooks’s conclusion: “We want a society run by people who are smart, yes, but who are also wise, perceptive, curious, caring, resilient, and committed to the common good. If we can figure out how to select for people’s motivation to grow and learn across their whole lifespan, then we are sorting people by a quality that is more democratically distributed, a quality that people can control and develop, and we will end up with a fairer and more mobile society… We want a meritocracy that will help each person identify, nurture, and pursue the ruling passion of their soul.” 

“How the Ivy League Broke America” by David Brooks in The Atlantic, December 2024 (Vol. 334, #5, pp. 26-40); Brooks can be reached at dabrooks@nytimes.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1063 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

10 Suggestions for Living in a Complicated World

            In the epilogue of his book, Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman gives advice on how to apply his thesis – that humans are basically good – in a world that embraces the opposite view. “For ages,” he says, “we’ve assumed that people are selfish, that we’re beasts, or worse. For ages, we’ve believed civilization is a flimsy veneer that will crack at the merest provocation.” He argues that this is simply not true – including in a chapter on the true story that contradicts Lord of the Flies: when 14 teenage boys were stranded on an island in the middle of the Pacific, they cooperated, solved problems, and were healthy and happy when they were rescued 16 months later (see Memo 1034 for a summary of this chapter). Bregman’s advice for pushing back against the negative narrative: 

•  When in doubt, assume the best. Communication is tricky, he says. “You say something that gets taken the wrong way, or someone looks at you funny, or nasty comments get passed through the grapevine.” Negativity bias kicks in, and you assume the worst. Far better, says Bregman, and far more realistic, is to give people the benefit of the doubt. Most of the time, this pays off. 
• Think in win-win scenarios. Many companies, schools, and other institutions are organized around the idea that it’s in our nature to be locked in win-lose competition. “In truth,” says Bregman, “this works precisely the other way around. The best deals are those where everybody wins.” Doing good is not only good, but it feels good because of the way we’re built. 
• Ask more questions. The Golden Rule comes in two flavors, says Bregman: the positive injunction (Treat others as you wish to be treated) and the negative (Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you). But both versions fall short, he believes, because we’re not that skilled at empathy – sensing what other people want – and making assumptions robs others of their voice. It’s better to ask them, listen carefully, and be guided by what they say. 
• Temper your empathy, train your compassion. What Bregman calls the Platinum Rule calls for compassion versus empathy. What’s the difference? Empathy is feeling with people who are suffering – I feel your pain – putting yourself in their shoes. The problem is that it’s exhausting and unproductive. Compassion is feeling for others, recognizing their distress, and then deciding how to help. “Unlike empathy, compassion doesn’t sap our energy,” says Bregman. “That’s because compassion is simultaneously more controlled, remote, and constructive. It’s not about sharing another person’s distress, but it does help you to recognize it and then act.” 
• Try to understand the other, even if you don’t get where they’re coming from. “When we use our intellect to try to understand someone,” says Bregman, “this activates the prefrontal cortex, an area located just behind the forehead that’s exceptionally large in humans.” Yes, people have foibles and rational analysis doesn’t always work, especially when we don’t see eye to eye with someone. But using our intellect mostly works better than relying on our gut. “Understanding the other at a rational level is a skill,” he says. “It’s a muscle we can train.” 
• Love your own as others love their own. “Humans are limited creatures,” says Bregman. “We care more about those who are like us, who share the same language or appearance or background… Distance lets us rant at strangers on the Internet. Distance helps soldiers bypass their aversion to violence… As humans, we differentiate. We play favorites and care more about our own. That’s nothing to be ashamed of – it makes us human. But we must also understand that those others, those distant strangers, also have families they love. That they are every bit as human as we are.” • Avoid TV news and social media. They are the biggest sources of distance among people, says Bregman, skewing our view of the world by generalizing people into groups and zooming in on the bad apples with the media’s negativity bias and manipulative algorithms. His rule of thumb: steer clear of television news and push notifications and read a more-nuanced Sunday newspaper and in-depth feature writing. “Disengage from your screen and meet real people in the flesh,” he says. “Think as carefully about what information you feed your mind as you do about the food you feed your body.” 
• Don’t punch people you disagree with. It may feel good to lash out at bigotry, says Bregman, or lapse into cynicism: “What’s the point of recycling, paying taxes, and donating to charities when others shirk their duty? If you’re tempted by such thoughts, remember that cynicism is just another word for laziness. It’s an excuse not to take responsibility.” 
• Come out of the closet: don’t be ashamed to do good. “To extend that hand you need one thing above all,” says Bregman. “Courage. Because you may well be branded a bleeding heart or a show-off.” It feels safer to keep a low profile and make excuses or fabricate selfish motives: Just keeping busy. I didn’t need the money anyway. It will look good on my résumé. But this approach isn’t helpful, he believes: “When you disguise yourself as an egotist, you reinforce other people’s cynical assumptions about human nature. Worse, by cloaking your good deeds, you place them in quarantine, where they can’t serve as an example for others. 
• Be realistic. Bregman hopes his book has changed the meaning of that word. He believes a realistic view of humankind is that “people are deeply inclined to be good to one another.” His closing exhortation: “Be realistic. Be courageous. Be true to your nature and offer your trust. Do good in broad daylight, and don’t be ashamed of your generosity. You may be dismissed as gullible and naive at first. But remember, what’s naïve today may be common sense tomorrow. It’s time for a new realism. It’s time for a new view of humankind.” 

 “Ten Rules to Live By” in Humankind by Rutger Bregman (Little Brown, 2019)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1062 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

a poem for times such as these

It’s when the earth shakes

And foundations crumble

That our light is called

To rise up.

It’s when everything falls away

And shakes us to the core

And awakens all

Of our hidden ghosts

That we dig deeper to find

Once inaccessible strength.

It’s in times when division is fierce

That we must reach for each other

And hold each other much

Much tighter.

Do not fall away now.

This is the time to rise.

Your light is being summoned.

Your integrity is being tested

That it may stand more tall.

When everything collapses

We must find within us

That which is indomitable.

Rise, and find the strength in your heart.

Rise, and find the strength in each other

Burn through your devastation,

Make it your fuel.

Bring forth your light.

Now is not the time

To be afraid of the dark.

Poem by Chelan Harkin

Recommended Books on Native American History

            In this Literary Hub article, Kathleen DuVal (University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill), author of Native Nations: A Millenium in North America, recommends five books on Native American history, all written by Native authors (click the link below for cover images and brief synopses): 

- The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer 

- The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk 

- Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community by Brenda Child 

- Indians in Unexpected Places by Philip Deloria 

- Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz 

“Five Essential Books for Understanding Native American History” by Kathleen DuVal in Literary Hub, October 17, 2024

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1059 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Free Online Resources for the U.S. Election...and Beyond

            As November 5th approaches, says Kara Yorio in this School Library Journal article, “Students are likely seeing a mix of mainstream media stories, influencer takes, memes, clips from speeches, and more. There is no way to avoid it.” An important contribution librarians and other educators can make is to build the skill of discerning where information is on a continuum from reliable to unreliable – and think about the motives of those who spread bogus information, “the motivation and methods of political messaging.” Some helpful websites: 

        • The Living Room Candidate – Political commercials from 1952 to 2024, with lesson plans comparing and contrasting approaches to political persuasion over the years. 

        • National Association for Media Literacy Education – Includes downloads of core principles and key questions about media literacy, including “Meet the Media Monsters,” a lesson plan for grades 3-5 on consuming and sharing media. 

        • News Literacy Project Misinformation Dashboard – Tracks 2024 election misinformation, helping students see the tactics and narratives that influence public opinion. 

        • PBS NewsHour Classroom: Media Literacy – Lessons on debates, political polarization, and violence, and specific topics, including the Kendrick Lamar-Drake feud. 

        • Project Look Sharp – Ithaca College provides elementary, middle-, and high-school lessons on media analysis and decoding. 

        • Teaching Elections – Inquiry-based lesson plans, curriculum links, an election map, election news updates, and fact-checking sites. 

 “More Than Just the Facts” by Kar Yorio in School Library Journal, October 2024 (Vol. 70, #10, pp. 12-14)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1058 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Fostering Healthy Conflict

(Originally titled “Coaching Through Conflict”) 

            “If educators are to have the kinds of conversations necessary to meet the needs of every child,” says Elena Aguilar (Bright Morning) in Educational Leadership, “then we’re going to have to learn how to navigate conflict.” Not angry, personalized, win/lose conflict, but healthy exchanges where colleagues wrestle with ideas, ask questions, demonstrate curiosity, change their minds, and keep students at the center. 

    How can we build the skills necessary for productive conflict? One way, says Aguilar, is using sentence stems that lead the conversation in the right direction. Some examples: 

• Can you elaborate on your thinking, because I’m not sure I understand? 
• I have some concerns about that suggestion. Could you explain it more? 
• I want to push back on that idea. I’ve noticed ___ and would like to suggest ___. 
• I hear what you’re saying, but have you considered ___? 
• Can you help me understand why you believe that? My experience has led me to a different conclusion, but I want to understand your perspective. 
• I disagree with you about that, but I want to hear your thoughts. 
• It would help me get behind that idea if I could hear more about ___. 
• I agree with several points you made, but I want to challenge you on this idea. 
• I have a request to make. Are you open to hearing it? 

“Coaching Through Conflict” by Elena Aguilar in Educational Leadership, October 2024 (Vol. 82, #2, pp. 66-67); Aguilar can be reached at elena@brightmorningteam.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1056 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Dealing with Pushback on Minimum Grades

(Originally titled “The Unwinnable Battle Over Minimum Grades”) 

            In this Educational Leadership article, Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) and Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University) say grading reform has been a “lightning rod for controversy,” especially the idea of minimum grades – giving a student a 50 or 60 instead of a zero for work not turned in. The rationale: preventing a single grade from drastically pulling down overall performance and undermining students’ incentive to keep trying. 

            The pushback: minimum grades “offer unfair and unearned assistance to low-performing students,” say the authors, giving students credit for incomplete or failing work and not teaching them responsibility. This criticism has led some districts to reverse course on minimum grading. 

            But the real problem isn’t zeroes, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. It’s the 100-point grading scale and the time-honored practice of averaging grades. On the first: 

• A percentage scale has 101 possible levels of performance, allowing teachers to assess student work in a super-precise manner. 
• But tests and assignments are not exact measures, and subjectivity and other variables introduce distortions. 
• The wide range of possible grades compounds those distortions (even with minimum grading, teachers must discern 51 levels), which increases unreliability. 
• Errors and distortions have been especially harmful to students of color. 

            The solution? Using a five-level integer grading scale (4 3 2 1 0 or A B C D E) like most colleges and universities, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. This approach aligns with the four-point scale used by most state tests (Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic) and the classroom rubrics used by many teachers. Zeroes can still be given, but they have much less sting: students must improve only one level to pass, compared with moving from zero to 50 or 60 on a percentage scale. And grades can be converted to GPAs with several decimal points. 

            Integer grading systems, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey, “make grading much more consistent and reliable. Teachers with comparable knowledge and experience find it easier to agree on distinctions between an A level versus a B level of performance than when asked to distinguish a 90 from an 89 using a percentage grading scale. Clear and well-defined scoring criteria, coupled with a limited number of grading categories, are essential in implementing grading reforms that prioritize fairness, accuracy, and equity.” 

    The second design flaw in traditional grading, say the authors, is averaging all scores across a grading period. The problems: 

• Averaging accentuates the devasting influence of zeroes. 
• Averaging says that everything students do counts equally. 
• Averaging makes students less likely to take risks and try new approaches. 
• Averaging doesn’t show student growth – the final grade may indicate mastery. 
• If effort and behavior are averaged in, feedback on academic learning is diluted. 

“The primary purpose of grading is to effectively communicate student achievement toward specified standards, at this point in time,” says the American School of Paris’s purpose statement. Well said! say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. 

 “The Unwinnable Battle Over Minimum Grades” by Thomas Guskey, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey in Educational Leadership, October 2024 (Vol. 82, #2, pp. 68-72); the authors can be reached at guskey@uky.edu, dfisher@mail.sdsu.edu, and nfrey@mail.sdsu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1056 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Recommended Books on Middle School Relationships

        In this School Library Journal feature, Laura Dooley-Taylor recommends books about tween relationships, in all their drama and complexity: 

• The Science of Friendship by Tanita Davis, grade 3-7 
• Honey and Me by Meira Drazin, grade 5-8 
• Maya Plays the Part by Calyssa Erb, grade 3-7 
• Other Side of Perfect by Melanie Florence and Richard Scrimger, grade 4-8 
• Match Point! by Maddie Gallegos, grade 4-7 
• Table Titans Club by Scott Kurtz, grade 5-8 
• Walkin’ the Dog by Chris Lynch, grade 5-8 
• Blue to the Sky by Sylvia McNicoll, grade 5-7 
• Running in Flip-Flops from the End of the World by Justin Reynolds, grade 3-7 
• Grounded by Aisha Saeed, Huda Al-Marashi, & Jamila Thompkins-Bigelow, grade 5-8 
• Eli Over Easy by Phil Stamper, grade 5-8 
• Free Period by Ali Terese, grade 4-7 
• The Braid Girls by Sherri Winston, grade 3-7 
• Summer At Squee by Andrea Wang, grade 3-7 

 “Break-Ups and Make-Ups: 14 Books That Tackle Tween Friendships” by Laura Dooley-Taylor in School Library Journal, August 2024 (Vol. 70, #8, pp. 48-51)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1049 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Spotting Fake News Stories

•  Check the URL of the story: abcnews.com is a legitimate news source. abcnews.com.co is not. Anything that ends with something other than .com is likely to be a spoof.

• If someone important is quoted, google the quote. It can be tracked back to an event or a statement if it is legit.

• Reverse search the questionable image on google. Right click the image and copy the URL.  Go to images.google.com and paste the URL to find out where it came from.

Check with these tools:

• Politics - Factcheck.org and Politifact.com
• General Scams - Snopes.com 
• Email and Facebook Hoaxes - Truthorfiction.com and Hoaxslayer.com

David Brooks on the Unique Qualities of Late Bloomers

         In this article in The Atlantic, David Brooks lists people who flourished late in their lives, among them Paul Cézanne, Charles Darwin, Julia Child, Morgan Freeman, Isak Dinesen, Morris Chang, Alfred Hitchcock, and Copernicus. Why didn’t these people (and many others) excel earlier? What traits or skills enabled them to achieve great things well past what was supposedly their prime? “It turns out that late bloomers are not simply early bloomers on a delayed timetable,” says Brooks. “Late bloomers tend to be qualitatively different, possessing a different set of abilities that are mostly invisible to, or discouraged by, our current education system.” He suggests some traits that parents and educators might watch for and encourage with kids who seem to be off to a slow start: 

• Intrinsic motivation – Late bloomers often don’t care about the kinds of extrinsic rewards built into schools and the workplace – grades, prizes, money, and other goodies designed to get people to adopt a “merit-badge mentality” and keep working on inherently unpleasant tasks, complying with other people’s methods and goals. Winston Churchill was a bad student because he needed something that his schools rarely offered. “Where my reason, imagination, or interest were not engaged,” he said, “I would not or could not learn.” 
• Early screw-ups – Brooks names several later-famous people who in their 20s and 30s were fired, got in fistfights, or couldn’t get along with colleagues. They weren’t good at following rules and adhering to the conventional rules of success, but they survived and eventually got their act together. 
• Wide-ranging curiosity – “Many late bloomers endure a brutal wandering period,” says Brooks, “as they cast about for a vocation. Julia Child made hats, worked for U.S. intelligence… and thought about trying to become a novelist before enrolling in a French cooking school at 37.” Diverse interests and years of exploration finally led to a true avocation. 
• The ability to self-teach – “Late bloomers don’t find their calling until they are too old for traditional education systems,” says Brooks, so they figure out other ways of acquiring the knowledge and skills they need. 
• An explorer’s mind – After years of false starts and mistakes, when late bloomers come into their own, they are freer of the ties and associations of early bloomers and more able to change their minds and update what they’re working on. 
• Wisdom – “After a lifetime of experimentation,” says Brooks, “some late bloomers transcend their craft or career and achieve a kind of comprehensive wisdom… the ability to see things from multiple points of view, the ability to aggregate perspectives and rest in the tensions between them.” 
• Unstoppable energy – “I’ve noticed this pattern again and again,” says Brooks describing two mentors who were driven and productive at the very end of their lives: “Slow at the start, late bloomers are still sprinting during that final lap – they do not slow down as age brings its decay. They are seeking. They are striving. They are in it with all their heart.” 

“You Might Be a Late Bloomer” by David Brooks in The Atlantic, June 26, 2024

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1047 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Using Open-Ended Math Questions to Differentiate Instruction

          In this Mathematics Teacher article, teacher/consultant/author Marian Small says “too many students sit in a mathematics class where the material being taught is just not quite at the right level for them” – either too easy or too difficult. The best way to engage all students, Small believes, is asking open-ended questions. Some examples: 

• Instead of asking fifth graders to multiply 42 x 37, pose this problem: You multiply two numbers that are 5 apart. What could the product be? I hope some of you use small numbers and some larger numbers. Some students might multiply 3 x 8 while others multiply 92 x 97. 
• There are ___ students in one school and ___ in another school. Choose values that make sense to you for both blanks and tell how many there are in both schools together. 
• You multiply two numbers and the tens digit of the product is 8. What could you be multiplying? One student might multiply 40 x 2 while another multiplies 140 x 2 and the class discusses the connections. 
• A number is a lot like 50. What might it be? What’s a number that you think is very different from 50? The teacher follows up by asking what 25 and 50, for example, have in common, or how 49 and 50 are different. 
• You evaluate an algebraic expression. If you increase the value of the variable just a little, the value of the expression increases a lot. What might the expression be? 
• The answer to a question is the word quadratic. What could the question be? 

Small says there are at least four benefits to posing open-ended rather than right-answer questions: 

• More students are engaged because there will be a variety of unique answers. - Because it’s easier to be right, students’ confidence increases. 
• A variety of responses produces a richer mathematical conversation. 
• There’s the potential to change students’ beliefs about the nature of mathematics. 

 “The Power of Open-Ended Questions” by Marian Small in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, July 2024 (Vol. 117, #7, pp. 528-529)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1046 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

A Rookie Teacher Responds to Critical Feedback

          In this Mathematics Teacher article, Georgia middle-school teacher Corey Gray describes getting some blunt feedback from his principal in October of his first year. Gray thought he had taught an excellent lesson as the principal sat with her laptop at the back of the room: a clear explanation of the distributive property, students turning and talking about their strategies, then using manipulatives. But when Gray nervously took a seat in the principal’s office that afternoon, she said, “You are an amazing math teacher. However, your expectations for a one-size-fits-all type of perfection leads to your own frustration in the classroom and clouds your vision of your students’ mathematical genius.” She used the analogy of trying to put square pegs into round holes. 

          Gray was taken aback but soon realized the principal was right. His very structured classroom management and one-right-answer approach to math procedures “was creating an environment riddled with fear and fraught with comparison,” he says. “I asked for answers, rather than asking for pathways to solutions. I confirmed correct answers only, rather than affirming thinking and productive struggle. I did not take the time to truly understand, appreciate, and value my students for who they were…” Students were doing math rather than thinking about math, resulting in disappointing and inequitable outcomes. Gray’s takeaway from the conversation boiled down to three lessons: 

•  Know that you are on a journey. “This journey is not easy,” he says, “but it is necessary to develop our teaching abilities and character… Embracing this truth allows you to welcome and seek out community…” 
• No one knows everything, but surround yourself with educators who know a lot. Collectively, you and your fellow teachers need to take risks, seek out the best methods and materials, and figure out what works best for which students. 
• Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good. “For me,” says Gray, “my desire to create the perfect educational environment for my students, anchored in problem-solving and student choice, fuels me, but at times it can become a burden because I often feel alone and burnt out… I remind myself daily to give myself grace, as I am not alone in this quest.” 

 “Teaching Is a Journey: Square Pegs, Round Holes” by Corey Gray in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, July 2024 (Vol. 117, #7, pp. 530-532); Gray can be reached at corey.gray@uga.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1046 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Tom Guskey on Solving the Problem of Inconsistent Grading

            In this Kappan article, Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) says the main reason for parent pushback on standards-based grading is inconsistency among teachers. Within the same school, he says, “What counts as part of the grade, what doesn’t count, and how different aspects of students’ performance are weighted in determining grades – all can be different.” Such variations in grading policies from classroom to classroom, says Guskey, are unfair and inequitable because: 

• Some students game the system, calculating and manipulating points for good grades. 
• For other students, the grading game is a mysterious puzzle they must figure out in every class, and their grades don’t reflect their actual learning. 
• When parents ask their children what grades they expect, kids often have no clue. 

“Before standards-based or competency-based grading reforms can be implemented,” says Guskey, “this inconsistency in grading must be addressed.” Here are three steps he believes schools and districts need to take: 

• Reach consensus on the purpose of grading and report cards. This involves deciding what information grades will communicate, the primary audience, and the purpose. Guskey shares these exemplars: 
• Elementary: The purpose of this report card is to describe students’ learning progress to parents and families, based on our school’s learning goals for each grade level. It is intended to inform parents and families about learning successes and to guide improvements when needed. 
• Middle/high: The purpose of this report card is to communicate with parents, families, and students about the achievement of specific learning goals. It identifies students’ current levels of performance regarding those goals, areas of strength, and areas where additional time and effort are needed. 
• The American School of Paris: The primary purpose of grading is to effectively communicate student achievement toward specific standards, at this point in time. A grade should reflect what a student knows and is able to do. Students will receive separate feedback and evaluation on their learning habits, which will not be included in the academic achievement grades. 

In the Paris school’s statement, Guskey highlights the importance of grades reporting mastery of standards, not averages (which allow early stumbles to unfairly pull down students’ grades), and separating students’ academic achievement from other areas of performance. 

• Use grading scales with 4-7 levels of performance. Guskey believes that 100-point grading scales offer “the illusion of precision” but are actually more vulnerable to teacher subjectivity and unreliability. Researchers have found that using fewer grading levels increases inter-rater reliability and reduces teacher subjectivity and variability from class to class. “Teachers with comparable knowledge and experience,” says Guskey, “are far more likely to agree when distinguishing an A level from a B level of performance than when distinguishing a 90 from an 89 using the percentage scale. The use of clear and well-defined scoring criteria, along with a limited number of grading categories, helps ensure a shared understanding among teachers and promotes more-consistent grading practices.”

• Separately report academic and non-academic student performance. “Hodgepodge” grades that combine academic attainment, progress/improvement, and other areas (effort, class participation, collaboration, responsibility, initiative, organization, self-regulation, low-stakes assessments, homework) make report cards “a confusing amalgamation that is impossible to interpret clearly and accurately,” says Guskey. He advocates separate reporting of these three categories on report cards and transcripts, which produces a more-accurate picture of academic performance, progress, and other areas. What’s more, he says, it’s less work for teachers since they don’t have to calculate an amalgam of student performance in the different domains. 

            “These steps,” Guskey concludes, “address the greatest concerns of parents and families, facilitate better communication between school and home, and ensure greater honesty, accuracy, and equity in grading.” 

“Addressing Inconsistencies in Grading Practices” by Thomas Guskey in Kappan, May 2024 (Vol. 105, #8, pp. 52-57); Guskey can be reached at Guskey@uky.edu. See Marshall Memo 962 for another Guskey article on grading.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1035 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Is Lord of the Flies For Real?

            In the second chapter of his book Humankind, Rutger Bregman raises questions about Lord of the Flies, William Golding’s 1951 novel, which has been hailed as one of the classics of the 20th century, has sold tens of millions of copies, been translated into more than 30 languages, and is still taught in classrooms around the world. The book describes how a group of British schoolboys survive a plane crash on a remote island and, after some initial attempts at civilized self-governance, paint their faces, cast off their clothes, and bully and mistreat each other. Before they are rescued, three of the boys are killed. 

            Golding, a U.K. schoolmaster, created Lord of the Flies after musing to his wife, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?” What made the book so popular is that it skillfully dramatized a widely held belief about what humans are really like just beneath the veneer of civilization. “Man produces evil,” said Golding, “as a bee produces honey.”

            Bregman remembers reading the book as a teenager. “I turned it over and over in my mind,“ he says, “but not for a second did I think to doubt Golding’s view of human nature.” It was only years later that he read about the author’s life – his unhappiness, alcoholism, depression, about how he divided his students into gangs and encouraged them to attack one another. “I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding said, “because I am of that sort by nature.” It was from this mindset that Lord of the Flies was born. 

            Those troubling biographical details aside, did Golding’s book accurately portray the primal nature of homo sapiens? Most people believe it does, or are at least fascinated by that possibility, which explains the book’s extraordinary popularity. 

            But Bregman had his doubts, and he started looking for an actual instance of young people forced to survive away from civilization. An Internet search led him to a 1966 newspaper story of six boys who set off on a fishing trip from the South Pacific island of Tonga and were swept away by a storm and shipwrecked on a tiny island for more than a year. After more sleuthing and some good luck, Bregman tracked down the name of the captain who rescued the boys, Peter Warner, and traveled to Australia to meet him and see what happened in this real-life Lord of the Flies. 

            In months of interviews with Warner (then 90 years old) and Mano Totau, one of the surviving boys from the island (then almost 70), and more investigative work, Bregman pieced together the story. The boys, age 13 to 16, were students at St. Andrews, an Anglican boarding school on Tonga. Bored with the school’s strict routines, the teens “borrowed” a boat from a fisherman they all disliked and slipped out of the harbor one night without being seen. A storm came out of nowhere, shredding the boat’s sail and breaking the rudder. After eight days adrift, the boys spotted an island and managed to get ashore. They found it was deserted and quite inhospitable with steep cliffs and very little vegetation and spring water. 

            Far from descending into savagery and turning on each other, the boys built a hut, hollowed out tree trunks to store rainwater, cultivated a food garden, constructed chicken pens and a small gymnasium, and after many attempts, produced a spark, started a fire, and tended the flame for their entire time on the island. Working in two-person teams, the boys took turns cultivating the garden, cooking food, standing guard, and keeping a lookout for passing ships. They settled disputes by sending antagonists to opposite ends of the island until they calmed down and were willing to apologize. Days began and ended with prayer and songs, accompanied by a makeshift guitar. 

            There were many hardships. The raft the boys built to escape the island was destroyed in the crashing surf. A storm toppled a tree, demolishing their hut. One boy fell off a cliff and broke his leg and his classmates had to figure out how to fashion a splint. In a period of drought, they were all crazed with thirst. Yet the boys survived, and when they were rescued, all were in top physical condition and the broken leg had healed perfectly. 

            “This is the real-life Lord of the Flies,” says Bregman. “It’s also a story that nobody knows.” While the boys who so bravely and cooperatively survived on the island “have been consigned to obscurity, William Golding’s book is still widely read.” Building on the book’s dark premise, several reality TV shows have perpetuated the trope that human beings, left to our own devices, will behave like beasts – in the words of one contestant, “stop being polite and start getting real” – lying, cheating, provoking, antagonizing. 

            We could discount reality TV as profit-making entertainment, but studies have shown that watching Lord of the Flies-type television can make people more aggressive. “In children,” reports Bregman, “the correlation between seeing violent images and aggression in adulthood is stronger than the correlation between asbestos and cancer, or between calcium intake and bone mass.” Stories of innate barbarism also affect how people look at the world. A British study found that girls who watch a lot of reality TV more often say that being mean and telling lies are necessary to getting ahead in life.                “It’s time we told a different kind of story,” says Bregman. “The real Lord of the Flies is a story of friendship and loyalty, a story that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other. Of course, it’s only one story. But if we’re going to make Lord of the Flies required reading for millions of teenagers, then let’s also tell them about the time real kids found themselves stranded on a deserted island.” As Peter Warner wrote in his memoir, “Life has taught me a great deal, including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.” 

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (Little Brown & Company, 2019)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1034 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Libraries As the Heartbeat of Schools

           In this Knowledge Quest article, veteran teacher/librarian Amy Brownlee (she’s now teaching the children of some of her former students) describes the way she leverages the power of the libraries in her rural Kansas school district: 

• Getting to know learners – Brownlee learns the names of all 500 students (and how to pronounce them correctly) in the first two weeks of school, has students fill out a Getting to Know You questionnaire, pays attention to the books they request and their evolving interests – animals, trains, gymnastics (Simone Biles!), karate, soccer, swimming, biographies – and keeps track of older students’ sports events and chatter on social media. 
• Engaging students and staying relevant – Brownlee and her library paraprofessional write a new joke on the library whiteboard every two or three days and students and colleagues drop by for a chuckle. She uses music, movement, author talks, news of books that win awards, designing bookmarks, contests (was this line of poetry written by Robert Frost or Taylor Swift?), and other activities to jazz up the library, and makes sure students know about new book acquisitions. 
• A safe, inclusive space – “It is essential that our libraries welcome every learner and staff member in the school,” says Brownlee. She accomplishes this by curating a diverse collection of books and magazines (mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors) and assuring students and colleagues that their checkout history and research interests will be kept confidential. “Learners know they are free to seek the information they want without fear of judgment or comment from others. Now more than ever our library ethics guaranteeing privacy and confidentiality are essential. The freedom to read is at the heart of what libraries provide.” 
• Giving learners a voice – Brownlee tries to accomplish this by encouraging students to request books; displaying students’ artwork, projects, and writing; showcasing connections to classroom learning; letting kids serve as library aides; and maintaining a student advisory board. 
• Tuning in on life outside the library – Brownlee praises students for their accomplishments and displays around the school, tries to attend student performances and athletic events, and chats with parents about what students are doing. 
• Leveraging the power of books as a bonding agent – She is a fan of Kylene Beers and Robert Probst’s Book, Head, and Heart (BHH) framework, which encourages students to think about books at three levels: 
• Book – What is this about? Who’s telling the story? What does the author want me to know? 
• Head – What surprised me? What does the author think I already know? What changed, challenged, or confirmed my thinking? What did I notice? 
• Heart – What did I learn about me? How will this help me to be better? 

Brownlee modeled the protocol for her students using the Shel Silverstein poem, “The Little Boy and the Old Man” and created a poster encouraging students to think about all the books they read on the three BHH dimensions. 

 “Building Bonds With Young Readers: The Power of Relationships” by Amy Brownlee in Knowledge Quest, March/April 2024 (Vol. 52, #4, pp. 16-23); Brownlee can be reached at amybrownlee93@gmail.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1032 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.