Keys to Supporting School Leaders

            In this article in The Learning Professional, Massachusetts assistant superintendent Ayesha Farag reports that 20 percent of U.S. principals leave their schools each year, and the average tenure for principals is four years. How can principal supervisors (Farag works with 15 elementary school leaders) support and sustain their colleagues to change these troubling statistics? She believes the key variables are a supportive district ecosystem, aligned values and vision, regular collaboration (including frequent school visits and check-in meetings), and opportunities for continuous professional learning. 

            Farag suggests surveying principals on questions like those below and using the responses to guide districts on providing effective support and creating conditions for success and stamina: 

• What district processes and structures will best support you in your role as a principal? 
• How can your supervisor best support your work? 
• What should trust and transparency look like in the district? 
• What role should principals play in district decision-making? 
• To what extent do you feel that districtwide decisions and policies reflect and promote shared values, and in what ways can alignment be improved? 
• What is the driving force behind your work as a principal? What intrinsic “why” motivates your daily efforts, and how does it show up in your leadership? 
• What will best support your ongoing learning and growth as a principal? 
• What specific skills or areas of expertise would you most like to develop further? How do you imagine doing so would enhance your leadership? 

“How Can We Sustain and Retain Principals?” by Ayesha Farag in The Learning Professional, February 2024 (Vol. 45, #1, pp. 12-15); Farag can be reached at faraga@newton.k12.ma.us.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1025 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Recommended Children's Nonfiction Books

            This Council Chronicle article lists the 2024 Orbis Pictus winner and honorees for outstanding nonfiction for children (click the link below for cover images and brief summaries). This award commemorates the first children’s book, which was published in 1658. 

Winner: 

• Border Crossings by Sneed Collard III, illustrated by Howard Gray 

Honor books: 

• The Fire of Stars: The Life and Brilliance of the Woman Who Discovered What Stars Are Made Of by Kirsten Larsen, illustrated by Katherine Roy
• Game of Freedom: Mestre Bimba and the Art of Capoeira by Duncan Tonatiuh 
• Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day by Dan Nott 
• Indigenous Ingenuity: A Celebration of Traditional North American Knowledge by Deidre Havrelock and Edward Kay, illustrated by Kalila Fuller 
• Ketanji Brown Jackson: A Justice for All by Tami Charles, illustrated by Jemma Skidmore 

Recommended books: 

• The Bees of Notre Dame by Meghan Browne, illustrated by E.B. Goodale 
• Benito Juárez Fights for Justice by Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez 
• Breaking the Mold: Changing the Face of Climate Science by Dana Alison Levy 
• Cool Green: Amazing Remarkable Trees by Lulu Delacre 
• On the Tip of a Wave: How Ai Weiwei’s Art Is Changing the Tide by Joanna Ho, illustrated by Cátia Chien 
• Polar! Wildlife at the Ends of the Earth by L.E. Carmichael, illustrated by Byron Eggenschwiler
• Stars of the Night: The Courageous Children of the Czech Kindertransport by Caren Stelson, illustrated by Selina Alko 
• This is Tap: Savion Glover Finds His Funk by Selene Castrovilla, illustrated by Laura Freeman 

“Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children” in Council Chronicle, December 2023 (Vol. 33, #2, pp. 12-13)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1024 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Getting Students Working on Challenging, Open-Ended Math Problems

            “A good problem-solving task involves students getting stuck, experimenting, and getting unstuck,” say Stephen Caviness (Syracuse University) and sixth-grade teachers Crystal Wallen and Lorraine Stewart (River Bend Middle School, Sterling, Virginia) in this Mathematics Teacher article. “When students approach a problem with uncertainty, they have an opportunity for productive struggle.”

            Using a “Thinking Classroom” format (see Memos 976, 992, and 1013), heterogeneous groups of three students work standing up at vertical surfaces (with one marker) tackling “Open Middle” problems, which have the following characteristics: 

• A “closed beginning” – students get a specific prompt to solve a challenging problem; - Students haven’t been taught a prescribed method for solving the problem; 
• An “open middle” – there are multiple approaches for solving the problem; 
• Problems are designed to be accessible to all students, even those not on grade level;
• Students must approach the problem with their own reasoning and creativity; 
• A “closed end” – there are several possible solutions. 

“The Open Middle structure,” say Caviness, Wallen, and Stewart, “provides ample opportunities for teachers to respond to student struggle and help them to embrace struggle as a norm when solving problems.” 

            They conclude: “These tasks are powerful tools for creating a culture of collaboration in which students acknowledge and embrace the various thinking strategies that their peers have to offer… We believe that Open Middle tasks are worthwhile to implement in your classroom because they help students to embrace uncertainty, persevere through struggle, and be creative with mathematics.” 

 “Embracing Uncertainty, Struggle, and Creativity with Open Middle” by Stephen Caviness, Crystal Wallen, and Lorraine Stewart in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, February 2024 (Vol. 117, #2, pp. 138-141); the article includes three videos of students working on a problem. The authors can be reached at scavines@syr.edu, crystal.wallen@lcps.org, and lorraine.stewart@lcps.org. 

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1023 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

A Tribute to Robie Harris, Author of "It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, and Sexual Health"

            Robie Harris, renowned author of books on children’s sexual health, died last week at 83. Here’s the New York Times obituary. Her best-known book, It’s Perfectly Normal, has sold more than a million copies and been translated into 27 languages. It’s also one of the most banned books in the United States. Here are a few quotes from Robie Harris: 

• Our children do not grow up in bubbles, so they already know a lot about risky behavior. However, they also have a lot of misinformation about what is risky and what is not. That’s why they need to have an honest understanding and not a sugarcoated understanding of sexuality. And I believe that is what serves our children and teens best. 
• I write books for children because in some small way I hope that they will find the words I write useful, reassuring, interesting, and at times humorous, and also in some small way help them to stay emotionally and/or physically healthy by giving honest, accurate, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information.” 
• I would never say that every family, or school, or library, or health organization, or religious group must have the books I write. But those who choose to should have the right to that choice. And yes, all the work I do is also connected not only to my right to read and write, but to children’s and teens’ right to read. 
• I believe that our librarians are the real heroes in our democracy. They are the keepers of our democracy by allowing children, teens, and adults to choose the books they want to read or may randomly come across in the library. This allows them to have access to ideas and information they may seek, or need, or come across by happenstance. Every librarian is on the front line of his or her community, defending that freedom. As a children’s books author, I am only in front of my computer.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1023 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Teacher Teamwork That Gets Results

            In this article in The Learning Professional, retired superintendent/author Diane Zimmerman and James Roussin (Generative Learning) say that all too often, teacher teams have difficulty focusing on student work, learning from each other, and taking collective responsibility for student learning. Zimmerman and Roussin’s research indicates that three key elements in PLCs successfully boost student learning: psychological safety, constructive conflict, and actionable learning. 

• Psychological safety – Team members feel that they can take risks, make mistakes, and ask for help. This operates at four levels: 
• Trust in self – I feel safe speaking my personal truths. 
• Trust in relationships – I feel listened to and respected by my teammates. 
• Trust in process – There are norms for taking turns, listening to all voices, and more. 
• Trust in collective learning – Cycles of inquiry explore student successes and challenges and identify the most effective classroom practices. 

“When any of these dimensions breaks down, teams tend to bog down,” say Zimmerman and Roussin. “When teams regularly monitor the four dimensions of trust, they increase their psychological safety, capacity to self-monitor, and self-regulate (and co-regulate) to maintain and repair trust.” 

            One way to establish team norms up front is to ask team members what they don’t like about meetings and flip those into agreements on what collaboration will look like. Going forward, the norms should always be there, and any team member can speak up when there are problems – for example, “Time out. We need to balance voices in the room” or “We seem bogged down. Can someone give a summary of the key points on the floor?” 

• Constructive conflict – Avoiding conflict and always striving for harmony can lead to groupthink, say Zimmerman and Roussin, which won’t improve teaching and learning. There’s going to be conflict; the trick “is staying open, neutral, curious, and interested… seeing disagreements as opportunities to learn.” 
• Key skills include: - Summarizing a disagreement so it can be discussed with less passion;
• Getting more comfortable hearing other perspectives and points of view; 
• Intentionally drawing out differences in how colleagues think and perceive. 

Teammates need to learn to be aware of personal triggers that derail productive discourse. reframing those emotions into a neutral or positive approach to the problem. “I’m feeling anxious,” one person might say, then listen to how others react, and work together to resolve the issue. 

• Actionable learning – To get better results with students, teams need to dive into kids’ learning difficulties, identify skill and knowledge gaps, and collectively identify new teaching strategies that produce better results. Key skills:
• Regularly assessing what’s working and not working with students; 
• Challenging the status quo (for example, a mandated commercial program) and examining assumptions about current practices; 
• The team organizing around more-effective practices. 

Team members need to ask probing questions: What do we know and what don’t we know? Why is this important? What might we do next? If a teacher has learned a successful classroom technique, it needs to be shared – perhaps in a workshop, perhaps by colleagues observing that classroom. 

 “Teacher Teams That Lead to Student Learning” by Diane Zimmerman and James Roussin in The Learning Professional, December 2023 (Vol. 44, #6, pp. 66-70); the authors can be reached at dpzimmer@gmail.com and jim.roussin@gmail.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1018 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Student Self-Talk and Classroom Success

            In this American Journal of Education article, Benjamin Uhrich (University of North Carolina/Charlotte) and seven colleagues say that “self-talk is ubiquitous in human beings and plays a role in virtually all learning functions… [It’s a] free-flowing internal dialogue that guides our behavior and future thoughts, for better or for worse.” 

            The researchers studied college students’ use of self-talk when faced with difficult situations, and its effect on their: 

• School satisfaction – How happy students were with their educational experience; 
• Self-efficacy – Students’ belief they were capable of successfully achieving goals; 
• Academic performance – Success at reasoning, cognitive development, planning, motivation, self-regulation, metacognition, executive function, and grades. 

            Uhrich et al. analyzed 1,092 self-talk responses from 177 undergraduates at a small liberal arts college in the southeastern U.S. Here are some examples: 

• I am thinking I can handle this. 
• I can do this if I keep trying. 
• I am so worried. But I need to focus now. 
• This is not what I was planning on, but oh well, it is what it is. I’ll have to get started studying immediately and make sure to eliminate as many distractions as I can. The key is not to stress out more than is necessary. Just keep calm and let’s take a deep breath and get to it. 
• This class is the worst. I feel like I’m going to die. I’m bored and feel like I’m wasting my time with this class. 
• Oh s---, I’m screwed. This test will ruin my grade in the class and absolutely kill my GPA. Why didn’t I study before today? I always do this to myself. I never should have taken this class. I hate this school. 
• I’m so dumb. 

            What were the results of the study? Uhrich and colleagues found that downbeat self-talk had a negative effect on students’ school satisfaction and self-efficacy, but not on their grades and GPA. As for positive inner speech, the researchers found “consistent and robust relationships between self-talk and academic satisfaction, self-efficacy, and performance.” Students can use constructive self-talk to regulate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which will boost school satisfaction, a growth mindset, and grades. 

            The researchers’ conclusion for K-12 as well as college settings: “Self-talk is a unique and influential construct that should be of interest to academics and practitioners across the disciplines of psychology and education… Self-talk is not a mere repackaging of personality traits, nor skills or strategies people use to optimize their performance… Interventions that promote adaptive self-talk in the context of the school setting have the potential to be transformative.” 

 “The Power of Inner Voice: Examining Self-Talk’s Relationship with Academic Outcomes” by Benjamin Uhrich, Sandra Rogelberg, Steven Rogelberg, John Kello, Eleanor Williams, Shahar Gur, Leann Caudill, and Miles Moffit in American Journal of Education, November 2023 (Vol. 130, #1, pp. 31-60); Uhrich can be reached at benjaminuhrich@hotmail.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1017 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Solstice Poem

Solstice Poem

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

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

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

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world 

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

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, 

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break 

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,

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

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

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

a remote important region in all who talk:

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

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

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep:

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

the darkness around us is deep.