The Tempered Radical

What DOES Effective Teaching Look Like?

I’ve spent a bunch of time recently engaged in webinars with a bunch of brilliant members of the Teacher Leaders Network who have been providing feedback to the Department of Education on all kinds of education policies. 

One question that keeps coming up again and again is:

What does effective teaching look like? How would an outside observer know if he/she were in an effective teacher’s classroom?

The problem with this question is that education's stakeholders---parents, policymakers, business owners, students, teachers, community leaders, public interest groups---all have different expectations for our schools.

Five Great Radical Reads You May Have Missed

By the time that this blog post ends up on the Radical, I hope I'll be wrapped up on the couch staring at the Christmas tree with my 18-month old daughter, who has fallen in love with Ho-Ho and presents.  I don't take too many breaks, but I figure that she's a good enough reason to put new content on pause, don't you?

I wanted to have something for you to read, though, so I decided to put together a list of five old-school Radical posts that resonate with me.  Some are reminders of the reasons that I teach.  Others are honest expressions of my emotions, clear explanations of practices that matter to me or my attempts to wrestle with challenging questions facing education.

They're posts you may have missed because I wrote them forever ago, but I'm proud of all of them---and I hope they'll give you a look deeper inside who I am as a practitioner and a thinker. 

With deep appreciation for your continued interest in my work,

Bill

______________________________

Five Great Radical Reads You May Have Missed

Post #1: They Still Dream

"Just listening to the hope in Johnny's voice was a reminder to me.  You see, sometimes I forget that every one of the kids that I teach have the same kinds of dreams in their hearts.  Some want to be gymnasts, soccer stars, or grid-iron heroes.  Others want to be writers, doctors or lawyers.  I've had future veterinarians in my room sitting next to microbiologists, rappers, deejays and dancers." 

 

Post #2: They're Learning from Me

"When my boys----who are probably the most physically talented and genuinely kind-hearted team I've ever coached----found out, they were equal parts heartbroken and furious.  They'd had their minds set on an undefeated season and a conference title, but with this "loss," it will be difficult at best for us to make it to the championship game. 

"Why won't they play us, Coach!  They must be scared that we're going to kill them.  That AD is a jerk.  Otherwise he'd reschedule in a second."

Tough situation, right?  I mean, I'm the jerk."

 

Post #3: Hail in a Handbasket

"Comments from media specialists poured in for about 72 hours—on my blog, in the Twitterverse, in personal conversations and in countless emails that landed in my inbox.  Many were thoughtful.  Others were wholly inappropriate and hateful.  The most shocking—which came in an email on Sunday afternoon—went a little something like this:

Are you kidding me?  You really believe that you know as much as your media specialist?  How can you possibly introduce students to novels as well as we can?  What do you know about information literacy?  We do this for a living, you idiot."

Post #4: Living a Silent War

"Maggie's words left me speechless---and wondering how long she'll remain in the classroom. Her spirit is positive and she approaches her work with a zeal that defines many of those who work with students of poverty, but will zeal be enough to keep her going day after day in the face of almost insurmountable challenges?"

 

 Post #5: A Short-Sighted Sprint to Measureable Glory

"But this year's end of grade testing was different.  I'm not sure why, but halfway through Wednesday's reading exam, I found myself quietly crying. You see, I was looking out over a classroom of kids that I know as beautifully complex creatures. 

They're inquisitive and curious, embracing challenging questions about the inherent justice and injustice in the world.  They've wrestled with the idea of standing up to power and tried to explain the origins of hate.  They've had their thinking challenged and challenged the thinking of others time and again over the past 180 days...

But in the end, none of that "growth" will matter."

New Slide: Acronym Burnout and Boys Who Cry Wolf

My buddy Paul Cancellieri and I were talking about the negative reactions that teachers have towards professional development the other day when he came up with a pretty remarkable metaphor that I think truly applies to adult learning in schools.  

Here it is:

Original Image Credit:  Wolfpack by Suzie T, licensed Creative Commons Attribution on December 21, 2010

Download Slide_BoyWhoCriedWolf

Do Paul's words resonate with you?  Are the teachers in your building tuning out every new change effort, no matter how important they really are?  If so, whose fault is that?  Should principals step off the gas a bit, focusing on a small handful of changes that are implemented carefully over time or should teachers be more responsible about embracing changes introduced from the district level?

More importantly, how can YOU---working from your position in the schoolhouse---get momentum to swing back in a positive direction so that professional development becomes meaningful in YOUR building?

One Tweet CAN Change the World

Three years ago, I sat at the breakfast table on Christmas Day reading my Twitterstream.  My family wasn’t up yet, so I figured I’d see what my digital peers around the world were doing. 

Nestled in a surprisingly long list of warm holiday messages was a 140-character invitation from Karl Fisch to join a new Kiva lending team that he’d decided to start.  Not knowing a thing about Kiva—a microlending site that pairs lenders in the developed world with entrepreneurs trying to start businesses in the developing world—I clicked through to this post on Karl’s blog to learn more.

Karl’s charge was a simple one:  He asked his followers to lend $25 to an entrepreneur in the developing world and to purchase two $25 Kiva gift certificates to pass on to members of their own learning networks. 

Knowing that I wanted to do more to help people in the developing world, I took Karl up on his challenge immediately—lending $100 to a group of women in Bolivia who wanted to start small businesses selling groceries. 

And I felt remarkable. 

Not only had I helped to change the life of families living in a poor country halfway around the world with nothing more than a simple click, I’d joined a team of likeminded individuals who cared about global poverty, too.

But the story of Karl’s Tweet doesn’t end there.

New Slide: Decorating the Christmas Tree with Initiatives

There's no one thing that frustrates me more than the constant parade of initiatives that seems to make its way through our schools and our conversations on reform in education. 

Most long-time classroom teachers are simply exhausted by the list of programs that our districts attempt to implement all at once.  While we can see potential in almost every program embraced by the school leaders, we also know that we can't possibly implement every initiative well when they're all heaped on at the same time.

What's more, we haven't got a ton of motivation to really master new initiatives simply because we know they're probably going to be pushed aside in favor of something different before the end of the year. 

 

Download Slide_christmastree

(Original Image Credit: Oh Christmas Tree by laihiu, licensed Creative Commons Attribution)

 

That's why I was so excited to hear Doug Reeves---one of education's real superheroes---speak at the Learning Forward conference last week.  Reeves---who has done extensive research on school change and who has written a new book on transforming professional development that I'm dying to read---argued that:

• Focus is the most important factor in the success or failure of schools.  Every school claims to have priorities, but some have dozens of strategic initiatives. That's not prioritizing.

• If you're not going to implement an initiative deeply, then don't expect great results.  If you've got more than 6 initiatives, you can't monitor them carefully enough.

• Good practices that are implemented poorly is a leadership issue.  Even the best initiatives will fail without leadership focus.

• Every school and district needs to take an initiative inventory every year, identifying programs that are worth pursuing and those that can be pitched.

How do your schools measure up against Reeves' statements?  Are you maintaining focus on a small handful of important initiatives that can be easily monitored?  If not, why not?

More importantly: If not, what are you going to do about it?

 

The Unintended Consequences of Incentive Programs in Schools

For months now—since learning about a project that was rewarding students who earned good grades with cold hard cash and limo rides—I’ve been mentally wrestling with the kinds of external incentive programs that are becoming more and more popular in our schools.

And while I’ve never been a real supporter of incentivizing any kind of learning, I’ve never had enough tangible evidence and/or research to take an intelligent stand for or against formal incentive programs until today.

You see, I just finished poking through a report titled A Fine is a Price—spotlighted in Clay Shirky’s newest book, Cognitive Surplus—that I believe carries real consequences for schools that are thinking about implementing external incentive programs.

Still Tired of Education's Glass Ceiling

Blogger's Note:  I'm in the middle of final revisions on my third book right now and I'm slammed with writing!  That means getting new content here on the Radical today proved to be too much for me.  As a result, I'm posting a column I wrote several years ago for the Wake County website.

What's frustrating is that I feel no different about education's glass ceiling today than I did when this piece was originally written. 

I hope you enjoy this.....It kind of makes me sad.

Not long ago, I had a reunion with one of my favorite students. Michael was only 10 when I met him as a fifth grader in one of my first classes as a teacher. He was someone that I hit it off with instantly, and I grew to know him quite well. Michael is now on the edge of graduating from college himself, and we got together to catch up.

As our conversation drifted towards careers, Michael surprised me by asking, "When are you moving out of middle school? You could teach somewhere else easily. Maybe you could go to a high school or college?"

"I'm not," I said. "I really love my sixth graders."

"But is that what you want to be doing when you're 50?" he pressed, "Don't you think it would be weird to still be just a teacher when you're 50?"

And for the first time in my career, I struggled to answer.

A Win for Building a PLC at Work

Most regular Radical readers know that I'm the proud author of two Solution Tree books titled Building a Professional Learning Community at Work and Teaching the iGeneration. 

I'm just a little bit prouder this morning, however, because Building a Professional Learning Community at Work---a practical book designed to support schools in their first year of PLC implementation by sharing stories, approachable research and a heaping cheeseload of handouts---was named the Learning Forward (formerly NSDC) Staff Development Book of the Year.

Not bad for a guy who is just a classroom teacher, huh?

After all, the list of NSDC Book of the Year award winners reads like a veritable Who's Who in educational thinking.  Last year's winners were Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan.  Roland Barth is on the list.  These are the kinds of people that I both respect and admire.

And now I share a place alongside of them.  Too cool.

What I'm most proud of, though, is that Parry Graham and I have written a book that practitioners find useful.  Not only did it stand up against the hundreds of nominations that Learning Forward receives for its annual BOY competition, but for the past two days here at the Learning Forward conference in Atlanta, I've had staff developers telling me that our title is one of the first that they pull out of their bag of tricks when working with new learning teams.

In the end, that's all I really care about.  I believe in the power of professional learning communities to change the learning patterns of teachers because I'm a practitoner that has had my own practice changed by collaborating with my peers. 

My only goal for writing was to share what I've learned about successful PLC implementation with others---and it sounds like that's exactly what I've done!

Be sure to stop by the Building a Professional Learning Community at Work product page on the Solution Tree website.  Every handout from the entire text----implementation surveys, team structuring templates, trust development documents---are all available for free download.

Even if you don't pick up a copy for your professional library, there's value to be had by stopping by.

And check out the complete library of PLC posts here on the Radical.  There's some good stuff buried under that tab, too!

New Slide: Giving Ideas Away

I came across an interesting Thomas Jefferson quote in Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus today. 

Here it is:

Download Slide_SharingIdeas

(Original Image:  Half Mast by Alosh Bennett, licensed Creative Commons Attribution)

Jefferson's thinking here really resonates with me.  When I give ideas away---to the readers of the Radical, to the teachers that I work with on my professional learning team, to the teachers who follow my digital professional development wiki----it doesn't make me intellectually weaker.

In fact, when I share my ideas with others, everyone sees more clearly.

That's why collaboration and intellectual philanthropy---whether it happens online or in our school buildings makes so much sense.  When we allow walls to keep us divided, everyone suffers.

Does this make any sense?

And if so, what lessons can educators---and educational policymakers---learn from Jefferson's thinking?

Should we be designing compensation and evaluation systems that incentivize collaborative thought and shared reflection on practice?  Should we be restructuring teacher preparation and professional development models, centering new work around sharing between practitioners?

How would (should?) instructional practices and student assessments change if we believed that sharing is essential for developing the collective intelligence of organizations and communities?

Just thinking out loud here....Not sure I have any real answers. 

 

 

More Lessons from the LeBronathon

Back when King Bron-Bron was preening on national television, dangling his talents in front of a handful of hopeful cities and generally inflating his own ego, I wrote a bit titled Lessons Learned from the LeBronathon that compared his situation to the teacher recruitment and retention challenges faced by high needs schools.

Considering the stink that LeBron caused when he returned to Cleveland for the first time this week, I figured it was time to revisit the Bronfest and see if there was anything new that we could learn from the NBA’s longest running soap opera about recruiting talent to our neediest communities . 

Here’s a few new lessons that I think might just be applicable.