Helpful Post from Michael Moore

"This morning I have been pondering a nearly forgotten lesson I learned in high school music. 

Sometimes in band or choir, music requires players or singers to hold a note longer than they actually can hold a note. In those cases, we were taught to mindfully stagger when we took a breath so the sound appeared uninterrupted. Everyone got to breathe, and the music stayed strong and vibrant. 

Yesterday, I read an article that suggested the administration's litany of bad executive orders (more expected on LGBTQ next week) is a way of giving us "protest fatigue" - we will literally lose our will to continue the fight in the face of the onslaught of negative action. 

Let's remember MUSIC. 

Take a breath. The rest of the chorus will sing. The rest of the band will play. 

Rejoin so others can breathe. 

Together, we can sustain a very long, beautiful song for a very, very long time. You don’t have to do it all, but you must add your voice to the song. 

With special love to all the musicians and music teachers in my life."

- Michael Moore

Graphic Novels on Families

            In School Library Journal, Brigid Alverson recommends these graphic novels about the family dynamics of love, loss, and lineage: 

• Crumble by Meredith McClaren, illustrated by Andrea Bell, grade 3-6 
• Cassi and the House of Memories by Dean Stuart, grade 4-7 
• Soul Machine by Jordana Globerman, grade 7 and up 
• Low Orbit by Kazimir Lee, grade 8-12 
• Family Force V, Book 1 by Matt Braly, illustrated by Ainsworth Lin, grade 9-12 
• Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story by Nicole Maines, illustrated by Rye Hickman, gr. 9-12 
• Little Moons by Jen Storm, illustrated by Ryan Howe, grade 9 and up 

 “Family Ties” by Brigid Alverson in School Library Journal, May 2025 (Vol. 71, #5, pp. 34-37)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1087 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Hidden Assumptions that Undermine Good Teaching

            “When we articulate our assumptions, we can examine and evaluate their implications and decide if they’re aligned with our deeply-held beliefs about teaching and learning,” say veteran international educators William Powell and Ochan Kusuma-Powell in this Kappan article. Drawing on the work of Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, they list some goals embraced by many teachers: 

• I would like to see all my students achieve success.
• I want to better meet the needs of diverse learners in my class. 
• I want to be more student-centered. 
• I want to personalize learning so every student feels included and invited to learn. 

But here are some unconscious tendencies that pull teachers in another direction: 

• I like to feel in control of the classroom. 
• I need to be needed. 
• I want students to feel I am indispensable to their learning. 
• I don’t want to try something new, fail, and look like a fool. 
• I tend to think that the way I learn is the best way. 

And here are some of the ways these tendencies manifest themselves in the classroom: 

• I have a tendency to jump in to “save the day.” I like to be helpful. 
• I look for (or manufacture) situations in which students depend on me for their learning.
• Sometimes I don’t listen well. 
• I have difficulty appreciating that other people may learn differently. 
• I’ve taught this way for many years, and it works for most kids. 

And here are the underlying assumptions that need to be confronted for transformational change to occur: 

• I assume I won’t feel professional satisfaction unless all learning in the class comes from me. 
• I assume that success (mine and students’) is monolithic and defined by outside forces over which I have no control. 
• I assume that failure (mine and students’) is something to be avoided, rather than something to be learned from. 
• I assume that to engage in public learning may be a sign of weakness (that I don’t know everything I’m supposed to know) and may make me look like a fool. 

“Overcoming Resistance to New Ideas” by William Powell and Ochan Kusuma-Powell in Phi Delta Kappan, May 2015 (Vol. 96, #8, p. 66-69), www.kappanmagazine.org; these thoughts are adapted from Immunity to Change by Kegan and Lahey (Harvard Business Press, 2009).

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1088 and #587 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Online Music Resources

            In a sidebar of this Knowledge Quest article, Lucy Santos Green (University of Iowa) lists resources for bringing music into school libraries and classrooms:

• Beth’s Notes http://www.bethsnotesplus.com – high-quality songs and classroom resources organized by theme, categories, and subject areas
• Smithsonian Folkways Children’s Music https://folkways.si.edu/folkways-childrens-collection/music/album/smithsonian - searchable by genre, geography, artist, label
• The American Folksong Collection https://www.kodalycollection.org – searchable by origin, region, state, subject, song type, grade level, tonal center, and games 

“Music + Literacy in Your Elementary School Library” by Lucy Santos Green in Knowledge Quest, March/April 2025 (Vol. 53, #4, pp. 30-34); Green is at lucilia-green@uiowa.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1086 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Two Approaches to Grouping Students in Mixed-Ability Math Classes

            In this article in Mathematics Teacher, Cassandra Kinder and Corey Webel (University of Missouri/Kansas City) say decisions on how students are grouped in math classes “carry explicit and implicit assumptions about student capability, what it means to work together in mathematics, and the purpose of group work.” A common and well-intentioned practice is grouping students by math ability so that struggling students can get extra support and more-advanced students can take on additional challenges. 

            But there’s been strong pushback on ability grouping, and in 2020, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics called on schools to stop the practice. “This sorting and ranking,” say Kinder and Webel, “has the potential to exacerbate inequality when policies create different-quality learning opportunities for ‘advanced’ groups and those who are ‘behind’ and need intervention. Students who are placed in ‘low’ groups suffer from lower-quality learning opportunities and are reinforced with negative narratives about their mathematical competence.” 

            With ability grouping “off the table,” ask Kinder and Webel, how should teachers handle classes with a wide range of math achievement? They describe two approaches:

• Hierarchical mixed-ability grouping – Standardized test scores are used to level students (for example high, medium-high, medium-low, and low), students are sorted into groups with a mix of levels, and students then work on grade-level problems, with the higher-achieving students helping their lower-achieving groupmates. There are obvious problems with this approach, say Kinder and Webel: (a) test scores decide who is more or less competent, which preserves ability labels; (b) students who are seen as more proficient are expected to explain the math to their peers; and (c) negative beliefs about math ability may be reinforced for students labeled as “low.”  In short, say the authors, mixed-ability grouping has the same disadvantages as straight ability grouping in that it “supports a general narrative, or story, that sees mathematical ability as innate, mathematics learning as linear, and mathematical competence as the ability to get correct answers without making mistakes.”

• Non-hierarchical grouping – Students are grouped in a variety of ways (working with partners, in small groups, or individually) based on how they solved an initial problem. The teacher:
• Selects a rich task that can be solved in a variety of ways; 
• Provides students individual time to solve the problem; 
• Observes students’ strategies, noting similarities and differences; 
• Groups students keeping the lesson’s math objective in mind. 

The teacher might group students who used a similar strategy and ask them to refine it, or group students who used different strategies and ask them to make connections and debate which is best. Both ways, say Kinder and Webel, “foreground students’ mathematical reasoning and support collaboration and collective sense-making.” The teacher then follows up with whole-class        discussion of how students thought about and solved the problem. 

            Non-hierarchical grouping has significant advantages, the authors believe. It “allows the creation of student groups with targeted support in mind, but those groups are based on the assumption that all students have valuable ideas to contribute to a shared understanding… This approach encourages recognizing differences without describing some students as lacking mathematical understanding. This advances the (productive) narrative that all students are capable and have valuable mathematical ideas.”

“Beyond Mixed-Ability Grouping: What to Consider?” by Cassandra Kinder and Corey Webel in Mathematics Teacher, April 2025 (Vol. 118, #4, pp. 273-279); the authors can be reached at c.kinder@umkc.edu and WebelCM@missouri.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1084 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Resources for Financial Literacy Education

            In this article in Social Education, Scott Niederjohn and Billie Kowalke (Concordia University Wisconsin) and Kim Holder (University of Tennessee/Chattanooga) make the case for personal finance education in secondary schools and list key topics that should be included: income and careers, money management, credit and debt, saving and investment, risk management and insurance, financial decision-making, consumer protection, and taxes. They suggest these online resources: 

• Council on Economic Education (CEE) – https://www.councilforeconed.org
• Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) – https://fee.org 
• JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy – https://www.jumpstart.org 
• Junior Achievement (JA) – https://jausa.ja.org 
• Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF) – https://www.ngpf.org 

 “The State of Personal Finance Education in the U.S.” by Scott Niederjohn, Kim Holder, and Billie Kowalke in Social Education, March/April 2025 (Vol. 89, #2, pp. 91-96)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1083 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Six Misconceptions About Psychological Safety

            In this Harvard Business Review article, Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School) and Michaela Kerrissey (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) say psychological safety has been widely recognized as a key factor in teams’ creativity, morale, and performance. But a number of distortions and misconceptions have led critics to say it needs to be tossed out as another flawed management fad. Edmondson and Kerrissey address these one at a time: 

• Misconception #1: Psychological safety means being nice. The idea is that you shouldn’t say what you really think unless it’s positive. But safety and comfort are not the same thing. “Wanting to be nice, people avoid being honest and, whether they realize it or not, collude in producing ignorance and mediocrity,” say Edmondson and Kerrissey. “Teams that don’t surface hard truths perform worse than those that do.” Effective teams give permission to be candid, take interpersonal risks, ask questions, disagree, admit mistakes, and distinguish between being nice and being kind. “Nice is the easy way out of a difficult conversation,” say the authors. “Kind is being respectful, caring, and honest.” 
• Misconception #2: Psychological safety means getting your way. A healthcare executive said a colleague didn’t support his idea in a meeting and that made him feel psychologically unsafe. What nonsense, say Edmondson and Kerrissey. Leaders need to hear what people think and not be emotionally fragile. “It’s helpful to think of psychological safety not as a gift for one participant but rather as an environment for the whole team.” Of course leaders shouldn’t tolerate bullying, harassment, disrespect, or unethical conduct. 
• Misconception #3: Psychological safety means job security. When Google laid off 12,000 people in 2023, one employee stood up at a town hall meeting and said this went against the company’s commitment to psychological safety. But that policy didn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be layoffs, say Edmondson and Kerrissey. In fact, by feeling safe to stand up and speak out, the employee was validating the policy.
• Misconception #4: Psychological safety will undermine performance. Some leaders believe embracing psychological safety will make it difficult to address weaknesses and hold people accountable. But this is a false dichotomy, say the authors; top performance requires both high standards and psychological safety. Leaders need to cultivate a climate in which candor is the norm; otherwise, “people hide information to save face or to be agreeable or both. And teams fall easily into groupthink – where members don’t want to disrupt what they erroneously assume is a consensus.” 
• Misconception #5: Psychological safety should be a mandated policy. “We can’t mandate psychological safety any more than we can mandate things like trust and motivation,” say Edmondson and Kerrissey. “You can’t pull a lever and make it happen.” In fact, trying to mandate psychological safety is likely to result in people keeping leaders in the dark about things they don’t want to hear. Psychological safety is built in a group’s interactions, and is fostered when leaders consciously use three tools: messaging honestly about challenges the team faces; modeling being a good listener, asking good questions, and showing that it’s okay not to know all the answers; and mentoring colleagues with feedback on group norms.
• Misconception #6: Psychological safety requires a top-down approach. “It’s true that what leaders do matters,” say Edmondson and Kerrissey. “But ultimately, psychological safety is built by everyone – at all levels… In small but important ways, everyone influences the environment. Anyone can call attention to the need for input or ask questions to draw others out, and anyone can respond to others in productive rather than punitive ways… By showing interest in other people’s ideas and concerns, team members can reinforce their peers’ voices and help establish a productive learning climate.” 

            Edmondson and Kerrissey conclude with suggestions on how to build on these insights to foster and reinforce a team’s psychological safety: 

• Frequently say what your team is trying to accomplish, why it matters, and how everyone plays a key role. 
• Improve the quality of team conversations. “That entails asking good questions, listening intently, and pushing for closure,” they say. 
• Institute structures for sharing reflections and tracking progress. “What matters,” say Edmondson and Kerrissey, “is the discipline of offering honest appraisals of what’s going on with the work (performance against goals) and of the team climate and quality of interactions.” 

 “What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety” by Amy Edmondson and Michaela Kerrissey in Harvard Business Review, May/June 2025

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1083 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.