Another interesting article from Carl:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2013/09/paying_attention_is_a_skill_schools_need_to_teach_it.html
Can you develop grit if you don't know how to pay attention?

If Students Designed Their Own School

     This is an interesting pilot program that I learned about from 'The Learning Pond', the Grant Lichtman blog that Jason pointed us towards earlier:  http://learningpond.wordpress.com/ The 14 minute documentary, created by one of the nine students in the pilot program, discusses how these nine students created their own 'school within a school'.  The students choose/create a 'Weekly Question' to present to other students each Friday, develop a 'Personal Endeavor' that they pursue over the course of a semester/year, and work with the other students on a 'Group Endeavor' that also involves a long-term group learning project.

     The students emphasize the self-directed nature of their learning and how the program forces them to take ownership of their learning in a way that the traditional schooling model does not.  I thought this would be an interesting possibility to explore for a small group of our students next year as our own 'pilot' or the model could also be applied to professional development with a small group of faculty who could use the self-directed learning model to create their own personalized and group learning opportunity.

  

Check it out.

The Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning

Thanks to Marty Miller for passing along this link to The Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning at St. Andrew's Episcopal School.  The CTTL is run by former Blair faculty member Glenn Whitman, and the website includes a blog as well as links to other resources.

Another great source for professional development.

http://www.thecttl.org/aboutcttl/index.aspx

The Case Against Grades

A thought provoking article from Alfie Kohn (2011) who has for many years been an against the main-stream voice in education.  What's the difference between assessing and measuring?  Do schools need to get rid of all grades in order to foster an engagement with deep thinking?  Does the absence of grades improve student and teacher relationships?  What would happen if grades simply went away?  When was the last time you received a grade?

The article contains numerous citations for further reading, and Kohn recently spoke at the SSS (School and Student Services) Financial Aid Conference in Baltimore (which Heather attended), and he stirred up plenty of thoughtful discussion - as he usually does.  Even if one does not go 'all-in' with his arguments, the article contains several useful suggestions for how to provide students with meaningful feedback and how to foster a genuine interest in the learning process. 

The Case Against Grades

Three Random Links...

There's no real connection between these links, but they are things I've come across in my readings over the past couple of days and I thought they may be of interest:



1)  Freedom:  Internet blocking.  A simple app that blocks all internet activity for a period of time in order to help focus our work offline.  This has been recommended by a huge number of content creators and media professionals.  Perhaps, it could find a role to play in our academic/residential environment as well.

http://macfreedom.com/

2) Zotero:  Pinterest for Researchers.  I've not played with this much yet, but it has been recommended to me by some friends as something that has revolutionized their reading, researching, and writing along with Evernote and DropBox.

http://www.zotero.org/

3)  An Easy Way to Reduce Cheating:  Willingham argues that the context within which we discuss honest really does matter.  Labeling people as cheaters confronts the basic self concept of honesty in a way that doesn't allow them to rationalize cheating-behaviour.  An interesting argument...

http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2012/11/an-easy-trick-to-reduce-cheating.html

Journaling for Athletes

This article focuses on the use of journaling to help athletes improve their athletic performance.  A UMaine professor, Richard Kent, has worked with athletes and coaches at a variety of levels to develop and refine his template for an "athlete's notebook."  On page 4 of the article Kent lays out the five sections he uses for his notebook.

http://umainetoday.umaine.edu/past-issues/fall-2012/sports-writers/

I will try a modified version of his approach with my girls' JV basketball team this winter.  I may use Google docs instead of physical notebooks so that I can keep better track of their responses.

Hearing is Easy, Listening is Hard

In the 'The Science and Art of Listening' (link below), Seth Horowitz, notes that 'hearing' and 'listening' are two distinct processes our brains continually perform.  In the article, he discusses the various levels of hearing that occur,  the importance that should be placed on this vastly underrated sense, and our brains ability to switch its 'attention' to those sounds that it thinks are important - how then to make what occurs in class important enough to students to trigger listening.  He notes that '[listening] is a skill that we're in danger of losing in a world of digital distraction and information', but that '[luckily], we can train our listening just as with any other skill. Listen to new music when jogging rather than familiar tunes. Listen to your dog’s whines and barks: he is trying to tell you something isn’t right. Listen to your significant other’s voice — not only to the words, which after a few years may repeat, but to the sounds under them, the emotions carried in the harmonics. You may save yourself a couple of fights.'

The article prompted me to think about how to encourage listening in my classroom, and to try think about different ways of helping students to train their listening skills.  During discussions this year, I have tried to emphasize to the students that they should strive to use each other's names, make eye contact, use parts of what was said previously to construct their own comments, use the text as much as possible, keep a pen in hand, and to work on keeping open/attentive body language, but I would enjoy hearing from others how they help students to 'listen' rather than just 'hear' in class.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/opinion/sunday/why-listening-is-so-much-more-than-hearing.html?smid=pl-share

Social and Emotional Education in a Community

The selection below is from a blog post by author Sam Chaltain (I've put the link to his blog below).  It inspired me to think about how we as an educational community structure social and emotional education at Blair.  While we regularly talk about this type of education as a strength of the school, there is little conversation about how this education is actually provided, other than through the "process" of Blair life.  Should we be looking at a more curriculum based approach to educating the whole student at Blair?  Are there are methodologies already developed out there in the world that would help us engineer more formal opportunities for social and emotional education in our dorms, our school meetings, our chapels, our dining hall and our classrooms?  How can we maintain a conversation about this issue at Blair?

The good news is that our historically myopic view of schools as knowledge factories is starting to fade away, and public voices like Brooks and Tough are helping to promote a more holistic view of education to a wider audience of Americans. The bad news is that too many public voices are continuing to overlook a body of research and evidence-based practices that schools can rely on right now to transform their learning environments.  Across the entirety of his new book, for example, Tough cites copious research studies and school-based programs – yet not once does he reference the expansive field – social and emotional learning, or SEL – that has, for twenty years, been at the forefront of researching how schools can apply the science of learning in ways that will deepen, not diminish, the art of teaching. (Sam Chaltain)

Links that may prove relevant to the discussion:
Sam Chaltain's full blogpost
The Ruler Approach
Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life
Yale's Health, Emotion, and Behavioral Laboratory
Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning
Responsive Classrooms

Many-to-One vs. One-to-Many: An Opinionated Guide to Educational Technology — The American Magazine

Another Econtalk podcast (see my previous posting regarding the interview with Paul Tough) led me to this article by Arnold Kling.  In this brief article, Kling offers his assessment of various technologies (tablets) or practices (flipping classrooms) that are being promoted in educational circles.  In particular Mike Eckert and I are going to use on upcoming unit to test out the "Independent Certification" idea he promotes.  Using Mike's syllabus, I will create and grade the assessment of his students.  Many-to-One vs. One-to-Many: An Opinionated Guide to Educational Technology — The American Magazine

A review of the PDC Harkness-style Discussions Event:

In thinking about our conversations today, I was struck by two elements that I thought might be useful for all of us as we continually think about our approach to the classroom experience:

• The Problem of Content:  While perhaps it is easier to see this in a Science or Math course, I too am constantly facing the issue of what 'content' is necessary in order to make my courses relevant and assure that they meet the criteria of the course description.  In US History or Western Civilization, I have found myself wondering what I have missed in the mad-dash for the Cold War by year's end.  And in my AP courses, I know that the dreaded test stands as the final arbiter of my success as a teacher.  It is easy to get caught up in the mindset that content coverage denotes accomplishment.  Of course, I also am well aware of the fact that our students don't really need to know the names of the three other major (but unsuccessful) Presidential candidates in the election of 1860 or know what the Hawley-Smoot Tariff actually did.  If they need that info, there are a myriad number of ways for them to find it -- frankly they will probably do what many history teachers do before their classes, which is turn to wikipedia.  As such, it comes down to the skill-set that we teach within the framework of the actual "content".  History, like any subject matter, can and should be seen as nothing more than a vehicle for educating kids about the much more important issues they will face in life -- providing them with the tools to realize what they don't know, to acquire that information successfully, to interpret it within the framework of a broader narrative, and then to share this realization in conversation, presentation, or in a piece of effective writing.  I am a firm believer in the fact that this is a reality that we all share as educators, regardless of discipline.  
• Letting Go:  There is nothing more terrifying as a teacher, I have found, than realizing that I can't and shouldn't control everything that happens in my classroom.  We are more effective as educators and intellectual role-models, when we "let go" and empower kids to guide the conversation, critique each other, correct misperceptions or misinterpretations, and find out what it is that they really are interested in within the framework of the assignment.  When I sit back and help the kids take the reins (after constructing a thoughtful assignment), I find that really amazing things are apt to happen.  Any of our students is capable of constructing a thoughtful question, considering the best approach to answering that query, and then engaging their classmates in an effective way to help find an answer (or perhaps an even better question) within the confines of the classroom.  Silence around the table in Clinton 205 can feel interminable, but when I remind myself to listen more and talk less, to embrace the opportunities for even the most reticent student to step up, and to help the students provide each other with context, I am routinely impressed by what happens.  

I am sure that I'll have more thoughts as I continue to process our event this morning, but I encourage all of us to continue the conversation.

Paul Tough on How Children Succeed | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty

Paul Tough on How Children Succeed | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty

David Brooks and others have recently written quite a lot about Paul Tough's book, How Children Succeed.  In this hour-long podcast, EconTalk host Russell Roberts interviews Tough and explores the role of "grit" in child development.  While the links between Tough's conclusions and school reform (particularly for impoverished children) are significant, I am more interested in how we at Blair, in our teaching and coaching, can help students develop perseverance in the face of adversity and learn the importance of self-discipline.  While we often bemoan the reality that our students are relatively poor test takers who only receive high grades as a result of rewrites, homework grades, and the like, in fact, we may be teaching them something far more important through our emphasis on the process of being a good student.