Teaching for the Future

Are we, at Blair, preparing our students for the future?

From Thomas Friedman in yesterday's New York Times:
"How to adapt? It will require more individual initiative. We know that it will be vital to have more of the 'right' education than less, that you will need to develop skills that are complementary to technology rather than ones that can be easily replaced by it and that we need everyone to be innovating new products and services to employ the people who are being liberated from routine work by automation and software. The winners won’t just be those with more I.Q. It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a lifetime."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/opinion/friedman-its-pq-and-cq-as-much-as-iq.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Are we creating an environment that encourages initiative and the pursuit of an individual passion?  Do we foster and reward curiosity?  Do we do these things consciously as part of our curriculum?  Do we, as teachers, model these values (particularly the importance of life long learning)?

I am not necessarily suggesting we come up short, but as we seek rejuvenation during the long weekend, we might also consider ways in which we can further integrate these values into our work at Blair.

Finally, thanks to those (particularly Eck and Jason) who are actively using and promoting this blog.

More on "Degrading" the Classroom

This article by Maja Wilson explains why "efforts to standardize language through rubrics and generalized comments provide a disservice to students and undermine the power of the reading and writing experience":
"Why I Won't Be Using Rubrics to Respond to Students' Writing."

An Invitation to Visit

Blair Academy

Class Visits:  2012-2013

Inspired by Rob Evans’s presentation and in hopes of building upon the already well-received "Department Open Houses," the PDC plans to create a cross-departmental, team (two observers) visit program in order to foster even more collegiality among the Blair Faculty.

The PDC would like to get as many teachers, administrators and staff involved in the program as possible. In order to "grease the wheels" a bit, we are willing to do the semi-tedious "paperwork" of creating Visiting Teams and matching up class schedules, so that participants need only agree on a time to get together before the end of the year (or more! 2 visits are better than 1, especially if they are spaced out over time).
So, we are looking for volunteers to visit classes, have their classes visited, and ideally to do both.  If you would like to participate, simply email Mike Eckert (eckerm@blair.edu) and let him know.  You can also fill out this Google Form to provide the needed information:  Blair Academy - Class Visits
If you email, include:
1.  The blocks you teach and what you teach during those blocks.
2.  Whether you would like to visit, have visitors, or do both.
Once we have put a visitation grid together, we will follow-up with further details, suggestions and resources.
Thanks, 
The PDC

Paul Tough's How Children Succeed

Read it.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, a few more details.  As Ryan's earlier post linking to Tough's appearance on the EconTalk podcast noted, this book is primarily concerned with the previously intangible predictors of success.

Tough organized his writing into five chapters, each with numerous sub-sections.  The first 50 or so pages are titled 'How to Fail (And How Not To)', and Tough concerns himself largely with the familiar discrepancies between high- and low-achieving students.  He spends most of the section detailing research on young children's neurological response to stress, which culminates with the development of an Adverse Childhood Experience score, which correlates notably with success, or lack thereof, later in life.  

The second section, How to Build Character, largely compares KIPP and the Riverdale Country School and the ways in which each attempts to develop the character of their students in far different ways.  He also delves into the research of Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology, and Angela Duckworth, who coined the term 'grit'.  There was an interesting moment in which the Riverdale Head, Dominick Randolph (formerly of L'ville), noted that his students are far less resilient than many under-privileged students, simply because failure is not a part of their lives and probably never will be.  Tough then cites several relevant statistics on depression and substance abuse as further evidence.  In speaking with Tiffany, her anecdotal experience in Philadelphia and at Blair line up with Tough's conclusions.  The Atlantic had a nice feature a few years ago on a similar idea, relevant when I consider what Latta called "Blair homesickness."  I also found the difference between 'moral character' and 'performance character' fascinating.  Moral character deals with ethical values, while performance character centers on effort, grit, and diligence.  KIPP even manages to assign a number to their students' character that appears on their report cards.

His third chunk, How to Think, was mostly an examination of thinking through chess.  Specifically, IS 318, a perennial national champion in middle school chess, with an 80%+ Title 1 population.  He works through the program, its players, and its teachers, all in an attempt to understand their success.  I found the most interesting section 'Calibrated Meanness'.  Tough started it with an anecdote from Elizabeth Spiegel, the IS 318 coach, who, at the 2010 national girls' tournament, felt after several one-on-one reviews of her students' game that she was, in her own words, "an abusive jerk."  But after several rounds, her girls were back on track and she offered this comment: "...I really believe that's why we seem to win girls' nationals sections pretty easily every year: most people won't tell teenage girls (especially the together, articulate ones) that they are lazy and the quality of their work is unacceptable.  And sometimes they need to hear that, or they have no reason to step up."  Tough concludes that nurturing is necessary early in life, but that tough love and challenge is a requirement in early adolescence.

How to Succeed concentrates on getting kids to college, especially those with what TFA called an "achievement gap."  Tough spends most of his time on OneGoal, a three year intensive college program for urban kids who show some desire and are willing to commit to intense preparation and guidance through the college process.  OneGoal also tracks their students' college success with continued counseling and advice through phone calls, email, and social media, something that has come up in our own value-added conversations.

Tough ends with a section on the future.  A Better Path is the shortest of the book and devoted to scaling the success of the various programs, as well as admitting the reality that the War on Poverty of the 1960s is now under the umbrella of education reform, something that is not realistic or remotely sustainable (and a valid criticism of TFA, I might add).

If you're looking for shortcuts for your classroom, you won't find it.  This book is about the culture of kids and schools and success.  It's strength lies in the potential you envision for an already strong community like Blair.

Read it.

Notes from Roundtable Discussion on Grading

Below are my notes from our first in a series of Roundtable Discussions. Please comment with thoughts or questions, and feel free to continue the conversation with any of us who were at the event.  Note the date and topic for the next discussion at the bottom of my notes:

PDC Thursday Roundtables—January 24, 2013:

Topic:  "The Case Against Grades":  considerations of how grading and grades influence the quality of our students' work

Attendees:  Chan Hardwick, Ann Williams, Mike Eckert, Carl Christianson, Kate Sykes, Jason Beck

Reading:  Alfie Kohn’s “The Case Against Grades”  Click here to download the reading.

Thoughts:

Using Alfie Kohn’s “The Case Against Grades” as a basis for conversation, we explored the role of grades in education and specifically discussed how grades impact our approach to academics at Blair.  Given that college admissions drives a commitment to reportable grading and the sense that that situation likely won’t change, how can we look at our grading philosophy and make sure that we are effectively motivating our students to achieve?

Particular questions and issues that were raised:

•          Are rubrics a fair replacement for grades?  Or do they have, as Kohn suggests, a similar constricting effect on motivation as grades?
•          If we limit the regularity with which we turn to number grades as a communication tool with kids in our classes, can we use individual student conferences to help them understand their performance, progress, and diligence?  Could these conferences serve as places for negotiating the actual reported grade with the student?  This would seem to fit in with Kohn’s suggestion that we “neuter” the impact of grades on motivation and achievement.
•          Carl suggested an alternative grading style/system  – JPN/CiI – that has the benefit of focusing on subject mastery and performance on tasks.
•          Should Blair explore the model of a grade-free freshman year (or term) as a way to help break the reliance on the numerical grade as the sole evaluation of academic achievement?  Would this help focus freshmen on developing academic skills? 
•          Should we re-visit de-coupling Unlimited Status from grades as a way to help students look at effort and achievement as separate from a strict numerical scale?  Is it a fair motivational tool?  Or should Unlimited be an educational process – helping kids manage their academic efforts instead of rewarding a specific level of numerical achievement?

Action items:

1. Continue the conversation and reading regarding the role of grading and the effectiveness of grading systems.
2. Explore a possible trial program of eliminated assignment grading in the History and Art Departments.  Replace the process of determining term grades with student conferences.
3. Encourage individual teachers to give evaluative feedback on assignments without resorting to the numerical grade as often as possible. 

Looking Ahead:           Thursday, February 7^th at 7:00 PM in the Wean Dining Hall. 
Topic:  Developing a Residential Life Curriculum

Alfie Kohn: "Feel-Bad Education"

In thinking about our first PDC Thursday Discussion tomorrow evening, I've been reading Alfie Kohn's most recent book -- Feel-Bad Education.  This collection of essays are a wonderful introduction to Mr. Kohn's thinking and approach to education, and I've found a number of things that really strike me as significant.  It is definitely worth taking a look!  The library copy will be back on the shelf later this week...

Amazon Link:
http://www.amazon.com/Feel-Bad-Education-Contrarian-Children-Schooling/dp/0807001406

Bloom's Taxonomy

I've been thinking about Bloom's Taxonomy over the past couple of days in the context of both a project I've started in my US History course and as a result of some articles I've been reading.  Through serendipity, I also had the following links bookmarked from a while ago.  I particularly like the "digital taxonomy" mash-up -- it takes Lorin Anderson's updates of Bloom's work and drills down to specific actions and behaviors that enforce the learning activities of the cognitive domain.  And there are ipod apps...  so i love it all even more.  Take a look:

Bloom's Taxonomy overview and update:
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#revised

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy mash-up:
http://blogs.middlebury.edu/fluency/files/2010/05/Blooms_Digital_Taxonomy.jpg

Digital Tools that align with Bloom's Taxonomy:

http://edudemic.com/2012/11/35-digital-tools-that-work-with-blooms-taxonomy/

There's an app for that:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blooms-taxonomy/id594400908?mt=8

Outlining in Reverse & John McPhee On Structure

    

 I thought this was an interesting piece in today's New York Times that discusses the writing process and outlining AFTER you have written the story.  Granted, Hamburger is a professional writer who admits to beginning his writing career as a pre-writing 'outliner', but it can be useful in class to have students first write their essay, then go back and outline it, and then of course after finding all the missteps and gaps, go back and rewrite the essay filling in the missing pieces of the reverse outline they created.

Outlining in Reverse

     I would also recommend John McPhee's recent piece in The New Yorker entitled 'Structure'.  Unfortunately, it's part of the locked subscriber on-line content, but if you have access and enjoy non-fiction then it is the master (in my opinion) discussing his craft.

Note:  Blair users can access the document at this link:  "MCPhee" Google Drive Share

Coursera

Coursera is, in it's own words, "a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.
Through this, we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in." 

I just finished my first several lectures on History of the Modern World Since 1760, which Phillip Zelikow is teaching.  The format of his class is a simple "conversation", in which he looks at you from a screen and lectures slowly, interspersed with relevant images, graphs, etc.  There is an easy quiz at the end of each mini-lecture that is optional.  Coincidentally, he taught a few of my classes at Virginia.

So far I'm very interested.  The subject is relevant to Western Civilization and US, and it's very interesting to be a student again, especially in such an atypical way.  You're actually participating in a version of a flipped classroom.  Check it out.

http://www.coursera.org

Quiet: The Power of Introverts

     Hans already shared a post on Susan Cain's Quiet:  The Power of Introverts, but I'd just like to follow-up with a recommendation for reading the book or at least taking a look at the link that Hans posted for Cain's interview and TED Talk on the topic:  How Do Introverts Share Ideas?
     Cain offers wonderful insights regarding how introverts often adopt a 'public' extrovert personality because our society, and particularly our educational system, tend to overvalue the gregarious and out-going over those who would rather spend time alone in quieter settings or who dread too much interaction with others.  This can be an exhausting process for anyone who feels they have to live their life in this manner.  She has an excellent chapter on the difficulty that some Asian students have integrating themselves into the American school system where talking often signals wisdom and understanding as opposed to the predominant philosophy in Asian societies that not speaking and focusing on contemplation and a reserved public persona connotes true wisdom.  Additionally, Cain argues that the concept of 'group work', both in business and in education, has its limitations because of the number of introverts in our society and that businesses and schools should remain cognizant of the fact that they should always offer a mix of opportunities for individuals to create, work, and learn.
     It's an interesting, relatively quick read that covers many areas that we discuss quite frequently:  public speaking, how people learn, efficiency and structure, personal relationships etc.  The library has a copy on display right now for those who want to spend some quiet time inside on a nice, comfy couch.

Interesting Blog

Below is the link to a blog I occasionally looked at last year and returned to today.  The author, Stephen Valentine, is at MKA and, at one point, worked with Stacey as an intern at the PEA Summer Session.  I appreciate his thoughtful blend of personal and professional reflection on the subjects of teaching and learning.

http://www.refreshingwednesday.com/my_weblog/refreshing-wednesday-table-of-contents.html

Summer Seminar Options from the National Endowment for the Humanities:
Here is a link to the summer program information page. CCB gives the following high praise: " The one I attended was probably one of the most productive and intellectually rewarding summer sessions ever..." Note the early March application deadline: http://www.neh.gov/grants/education/summer-seminars-and-institutes

What I learned from Todd Jesdale

This past weekend I attended the Saratoga Junior Rowing Coaches' Conference.  Todd Jesdale was one of the presenters.  Todd coached and taught my brother at Groton, then went on to build the Cincinnati Juniors Rowing Club into a perennial national powerhouse.  He's coached the Junior Men's National Team to several international medals, and he's won at every level, from high school to college to the international stage.  Here are few tidbits, most of which are easily relevant to the dorm, the classroom, or your particular sport/activity.

On trust and responsibility: Give kids every ounce of responsibility you can, from planning a race strategy in rowing to calling timeouts in basketball.  He had two great anecdotes.  Once he was standing by the boat, ready to launch before the National Championships, and his crew was nowhere in sight.  Sure enough, they'd had a plan, showed up, launched, and were off the dock before he knew what was happening.  They also won.  Todd also coached the 8th and 9th grade boys basketball team at Groton and allowed them to call their own timeouts.  He claims the stands were more crowded than at the varsity games.

On language:  Never say, "Where is Billy?  Is he late/sleeping/skipping/sick?"  He made the point that you should never publicly address behaviors you hope to avoid.  I immediately thought of the dorm/classroom/erg room, as well as the extent to which we discuss stress.  His most noteworthy line was, "A negative statement is a statement on the quality of the team."

On the pain:  Similar to language.  Never mention it.  Call it stress or strain, because it is self-imposed.  You chose to row; therefore, you chose to stress yourself physically and mentally.

On talking to kids:  Avoid talking about rowing or school.  You'll become a parent figure, asking the same questions they get on phone calls home.  Similarly, we all have favorites, so consciously target one child per day and talk about the weather, news, music, movies, but not school or sport to get him or her to open up.

De-Grade Your Classroom and Instead Use Narrative Feedback

I thought this was an interesting blog post from Mark Barnes about the use of narrative feedback in lieu of grades in the classroom.  He offers some thoughtful commentary on why he has adopted this method, and notes that even with 120 students, he would never go back to using grades.  Grades are probably not going anywhere any time soon, but I have found that, especially with Google Docs, I can provide students with much more feedback than with hand-written or Microsoft Word assignments.  With my AP U.S. History students, I have them peer editing a long term essay that each of them is writing on the development of the United States and how their perception of the nation has changed over the course of the year as we study the history of the country.

De-Grade Your Classroom

Getting to No - Robert Evans

Dr. Evans's article from Independent School Magazine - Winter 2012.

Getting to No