The Tempered Radical

Are Grades Utterly Useless?

One of my all-time favorite assertions about grading in schools comes from Grant Wiggins.  He writes:

"The most ubiquitous form of evaluation, grading, is so much a part of the school landscape that we easily overlook its utter uselessness as actionable feedback. Grades are here to stay, no doubt—but that doesn't mean we should rely on them as a major source of feedback."

I'm starting to think that Wiggins is right, y'all:  Maybe grades ARE utterly useless as a form of feedback.

Here's why:

 In the minds of many students, learning stops as soon as a grade is given. 

For too many students, grades are end points in the never-ending rhythm of traditional schooling.  Instead of encouraging continued study, they signal that it's time to move on to a new idea -- and that old ideas can be neatly boxed up and filed away and forgotten.  Learning in a graded classroom becomes an isolated act delivered in units that have clear starting and ending points instead of a fluid process of continual exploration and connection and growth and discovery.

Grades have created a world where students have forgotten that THEY can assess their OWN growth towards important academic goals.

Caught in learning spaces where the only feedback that anyone seems to value are scores given by adults, too many of today's students sit passively waiting for the judgment of others, stripped of the self-reflective and evaluative skills that literally define the most successful people.

The crazy part is that BEYOND schools, students assess their own progress all the time.  Need proof?  Then check out the self-reflection and evaluation being done by this boy -- who is determined to learn how to start a fire without using a match.

His behaviors look familiar, don't they?

Every day, the kids in our classrooms are polishing skills and measuring their progress without being graded. Our gymnasts are fighting through bruises to master new tumbling routines.  Our fishermen are learning which baits work in which waters.  Our gamers are experimenting with a dozen new strategies for taking on new levels in their favorite games.

But that kind of self-reflection and evaluation happens almost exclusively BEYOND school.  Once the bell rings, progress-monitoring becomes someone else's responsibility.

Grades mask the real and tangible progress that students -- particularly those who struggle -- ARE making.

Instead of highlighting areas of individual strength and weakness, traditional grades bundle the sum total of a student's academic self-worth into a tidy letter that fits neatly on a report card.  Imagine how hard it is for kids buried in Cs and Ds to maintain any kind of momentum in our schools.

Wouldn't YOU give up if the most important feedback that you ever received told you that you were below average in everything all the time?

Assessment experts Rick Stiggins and Jan Chappius go as far as to argue that teachers have a moral imperative to rethink the role that assessment plays in either encouraging our students from moving forward.  They write:

"Thus, the essential school improvement question from an assessment point of view is this: Are we skilled enough to use classroom assessment to either (1) keep all learners from losing hope to begin with, or (2) rebuild that hope once it has been destroyed?"

For Stiggins and Chappius, regular opportunities for student-involved assessment -- instead of grades given exclusively by adults -- can help students to see that they ARE making progress and growing as learners.  They can  begin to understand that they ARE capable and successful – a message that they may never have heard before from anyone in positions of power in traditional schools.

There's a lot to think about, right?  What role SHOULD grades play in our schools?  CAN they be something more than utterly useless forms of feedback for students?

Perhaps more importantly, what are YOU doing to make sure that classroom assessment is helping YOUR students to maintain their own intellectual hope?

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Related Radical Reads:

@shareski's Right: My Students CAN Assess Themselves

 Another Student-Involved Assessment Experiment

My Middle Schoolers LOVE Our Unit Overview Sheets

 

 

Are YOU Teaching Kids about Attentional Blink? [SLIDE]--

I don't have a ton of time to write tonight -- I'm busy preparing for a webinar on Literacy and Blogging for the Alaska Staff Development Network -- but I wanted to share a concept that I picked up from Howard Rheingold's newest book, Netsmart- How to Survive and Thrive Online.

It's called Attentional Blink:

 

That's important stuff, isn't it?  I know that I sure struggle to stay focused on a single task in a world where I'm surrounded by interruptions that are waiting to happen.

So what are YOU doing to teach your kids to concentrate?

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Original Image Credit: Untitled by Louis Rabin

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on February 5, 2013

 

Term Attentional Blink comes from P. Sven Arvidson, “A Lexicon of Attention: From Cognitive Science to Phenomenology,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2, no. 2 (2003): 99-132

Three Professional Reads That are Worth Your Time

Let's start with a simple truth:  The best school leaders -- whether they are classroom teachers, principals, or district professional development providers -- should ALWAYS be reading simply because reading keeps a practitioner current and serves as a source of constant intellectual challenge. 

But ask around a little bit and you'll probably discover that there's NOT a lot of reading going on in your professional circles -- and "finding the time" is the explanation that most people will give for failing to turn any pages during the past twelve months. 

That makes sense, doesn't it?

After all, we really ARE busy people working in a busy profession that does little to create time and space for practitioners to reflect and to think and to grow. 

So I decided to whip up a list of three professional books that really ARE worth your time no matter HOW busy you are.  

Here they are:

Common Formative Assessment: A Toolkit for PLCs at Work

Several years ago, I stumbled across this quote from educational researcher John Hattie in a Bob Marzano book: “The most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback.  The simplest prescription for improving education must be 'dollops of feedback.'” (As quoted in Marzano, 2003, p. 37)

It's a GREAT point, isn't it?  And it resonates with everything that we know about growing learners.  Feedback matters.

But providing "dollops of feedback" is a HECK of a lot harder than it sounds when you are responsible for 125 students who are assigned to classes of 30+ and you have 60 minutes of planning on a good day. 

Under those conditions, timely, direct feedback on performance becomes nearly impossible.

That's what makes Common Formative Assessment by Kim Bailey and Chris Jakicic such an important read.  The authors take a difficult task and show teachers how to make it a manageable part of their everyday work.  

If you are a teacher, pick this up and work through it with your learning team.  You'll have a better sense for just what responsible formative assessment is supposed to look like AND some practical strategies for incorporating it into your practice without killing yourself. 

If you are a principal, share this with your entire faculty.  Formative assessment matters -- but teachers have to be convinced that it's doable.  That's exactly what Bailey and Jakicic do in this short, approachable text. 

 

Multipliers - How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

As a member of a panel discussion on the challenges of recruiting accomplished teachers to challenging schools a few years ago, I was asked a simple question by a district superintendent.  "How can I get more teachers like you in  my schools?" he said.

My answer was immediate: "Find as many amazing principals as you can.  Hire them, develop them, and pay them a heaping cheeseload of cash to stay.  Spend more time on recruiting and retaining school leaders because good teachers want to work for good principals."

If you agree with my logic that good principals matter, then you've got to read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman and Greg Mckeown.

Based years of experience coaching the senior leadership of leading companies and thousands of hours combing through data on the traits of leaders who succeed, Wiseman and Mckeown identify the characteristics of Multipliers -- leaders who get the most out of their people -- and Diminishers, or leaders whose very behaviors hold organizations back.

What I like the best about Multipliers is that it gives tangible language for describing the kinds of steps that successful leaders take to empower their employees. 

While Multipliers isn't written specifically for schools, superintendents, principals and teacher leaders could pick this title up and quickly identify simple leadership changes that would leave their co-workers energized and their organizations more productive.

 

Why School?  How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere

I am a firm believer that public schools will never become the kinds of responsive, student-centered, progressive learning spaces that we want them to be until we can describe those spaces in simple, user-friendly language that everyone -- parents, policymakers and practitioners -- can understand.

That's why I think Will Richardson's newest book -- Why School? -- is worth your time. 

Not only is Why School a 51-page Kindle Single that you'll be able to read in one sitting, it's a title that you can easily share with everyone that needs to know more about the hows-and-whys behind the kinds of changes that most of us believe in. 

Will has accomplished something significant with Why School:  He's created a tool that interested educators -- and people who are interested in education -- can use to start the kinds of community-based conversations that might actually lead to real change for our schools. 

 

So whaddya' think of my list?  Have you read any of these titles yet? Would you recommend them to time-crunched peers?

What books would you describe as "must-reads?"

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Related Radical Reads:

What Are YOU Doing to Make Sure Your Students are Well-Googled?

Are Current #edpolicies Turning Schools into Brainpower Wastelands?

Is REAL Formative Assessment Even Possible?

Constantly Fighting the Good Idea Fairy [SLIDE]

One of the books I just finished working my way through was No Easy Day, the firsthand account of the killing of Osama Bin Laden written by Navy Seal Matt Bissonnette under the pseudonym Mark Owen.  

As a bit of a military buff, my main goal for reading No Easy Day was just to learn a bit more about the work that Seals do to defend our nation.  Their service goes largely unrecognized simply because of the secretive nature of their missions.   

While reading, however, I learned that Seals and full-time classroom teachers actually have something in common.

We both spend half our professional lives pushing back against Good Idea Fairies, who Bissonnette decribes as well-intentioned people working in the "head shed" beyond the mission who dream up ridiculous solutions to nonexistent concerns and slow teams down (Kindle Location 665).

(click to enlarge)

 

Download Slide_GoodIdeaFairy

In the case of the raid on Bin Laden's compound, the Good Idea Fairies -- in an an attempt to convince Osama's Pakistani neighbors that the middle-of-the-night attack was nothing more than a local police action -- decided that a group of Seals would be tasked with attaching a police light to the roof of one of Osama's Land Rovers in the early moments of the attack.  

Then, the same group of Seals would work together to push the car -- complete with flashing police light -- into the street in front of Bin Laden's house before returning to the battle.

Stew in THAT for a minute, would you?

Why would a group of Seals on a covert mission inside the borders of a country that didn't know we were coming ever WILLINGLY draw extra attention to themselves by firing up a flashing blue light that they just happened to carry along?

And are we REALLY convinced that neighbors woken in the middle of the night by the sounds of war -- helicopters, machine guns, explosions -- next door would believe that a local police action was taking place simply because ONE car with a flashing blue light happened to be blocking the street? 

But most importantly, do we REALLY want soldiers who are finally in position to capture and/or kill one of the world's most notorious and elusive terrorists afer YEARS of searching -- and who are literally risking their lives on our behalf-- to spend ANY time pushing a car out into the street? 

Ridiculous, right?

And discarded immediately by the guys who knew better because they'd been carrying out raids in Iraq and Afghanistan -- rather than calling the shots from Washington DC -- for the better part of the last decade.

The leadership lessons learned from Bissonnette's police light experience is a simple one: 

Sometimes the best laid plans -- especially in complex, constantly shifting, unpredictable situations -- are simple and flexible. 

And sometimes the best choice that leaders can make in complex, constantly shifting, unpredictable situations is to trust their talent to execute under fire.

Heavily scripting the shots does nothing but pigeonhole your team into an overly-complicated plan based on nothing more than your predictions about what MIGHT happen.

So what's the #flashinglight in YOUR school and/or district? 

What crazy plan dreamed up by a Good Idea Fairy is distracting you from work that REALLY matters? 

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Original Image Credit: If You Believe in Fairies by JD Hancock

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on December 4, 2012

Shameless Self-Promotion in Education's Social Media Spaces

Poking through my feed reader last weekend, I stumbled across a provocative Chris Wejr bit questioning whether or not social spaces were becoming nothing more than online popularity contests where people spend more time pimping their own ideas than they do listening to -- and learning with -- others. 

He writes:

I wonder the point at which social media becomes more about marketing the user than about the learning that can result from using it to connect with others. 

We often hide behind the idea that “the intent is good and we are sharing good stories of education” when we participate and promote education and social media awards and “top” Twitter lists.  

Do we really need these awards to share stories if social media is already about sharing good stories?

In a lot of ways, Chris is right, isn't he? 

While blogs and Twitter and Facebook are SUPPOSED to be "social spaces," there's definitely a TON of broadcasting -- pushing out ideas to nameless, faceless hordes -- going on. "Having followers" has become WAY more important than "finding co-learners" to FAR too many people.

But I think I understand the obsession with digital bling in education's social spaces, y'all.

We work in a nameless, faceless profession where there are few -- if any -- real opportunities to be recognized as individuals for what we know and can do. 

Even in our own workrooms, we've clung to the notion that every teacher and every lesson is equal and, all-too-often, we've created workplaces where accomplished individuals are shamed for daring to step beyond the group.

I'll never forget how embarrassed I was to win a Regional Teacher of the Year award here in North Carolina a few years back -- an honor presented at an surprise all-school assembly. 

Weird reaction, isn't it? 

At a moment when I should have been full of pride, I worried first about what my peers would think.

Perhaps more importantly, we work in a nameless, faceless profession where it's REALLY hard to make enough money to actually support a family. 

The VAST majority of full-time teachers that I know have to work part-time jobs just to make ends meet.  The rest married people who are paid really well, live lives well below their similarly educated peers or decided to stay single for as long as possible.  The sad truth is that teaching is still seen by the those who pay our salaries as a "nice second income" instead of as a profession for breadwinners. 

Can we REALLY be surprised, then, when teachers feed off of the rush that comes from recognition or readily embrace the chance to market themselves to audiences as experts with skills that just might be worth paying for? 

Don't get me wrong: I think piling up followers rather than building networks -- broadcasting instead of listening to others -- is a failed strategy, for lack of a better term. 

The REAL power in social spaces is found in the relationships that you develop with the people that you're learning from -- not the voice that it gives you. 

And the people in your network are far less likely to offer you help -- to challenge your thinking, to celebrate your content, to point you to new resources that align with your work -- when they feel like you are doing nothing other than using social spaces to push your greatness.

But aren't those self-promoting behaviors just another condemnation of a flawed profession rather than a condemnation of flawed professionals?

#interestingquestions

#noeasyanswers

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Related Radical Reads:

Twitter Snobs or Efficient Learners

The Self Promoting Teacher

Lesson Learned - Influence is Personal

 

 

 

How Gritty Are Today's Learners? [SLIDE]

Poking through my RSS feed reader last weekend, I stumbled across an article on the Mindshift blog that got me thinking about the role that grit -- the ability to persevere even in the face of adversity and failure -- plays in the success of today's learners:

(click to enlarge)

Download Slide_AchievementasaMarathon

 

The piece details the work of Angela Duckworth -- a psychology professor and former middle school math teacher -- who has spent the better part of the past several years trying to figure out whether or not gritty people are more successful than their peers.

Having spent the better part of my own life reveling in my own grit -- which, given my decidedly average intellect, is the only reason I ever succeed -- I didn't really need Duckworth's study to help me determine whether or not determination matters.

Persistent people always outperform their similarly gifted peers.

ALWAYS.

But here's the thing: Intellectual persistence -- at least in the kinds of tasks that still seem to define successful people -- doesn't seem to be a priority for today's kids.   

Spend an hour in a teacher workroom and I GUARANTEE you'll hear at least one conversation about students who "are too lazy to bother to try" or who are "driving teachers nuts because they're turning in junk." Missing work lists grow longer -- and lists of volunteers for challenging clubs like Science Olympiad or Quiz Bowl grow shorter -- by the year.

Heck, I'm not even sure that intellectual persistence is a priority for ME anymore. 

I find myself flitting from major project to major project all the time, rarely following through on anything for very long.  My mind wanders almost constantly simply because in a world where I'm literally surrounded by opportunities for constant distraction, it CAN.

I catch myself skim reading more than ever before -- or worse yet, navigating away from anything that seems intimidating at first glance.  Who am I kidding, y'all: I didn't even read the entire Mindshift bit that started this post.  Got through the first three paragraphs and moved on to something else. 

Does this sound familiar to anyone besides me?  And more importantly, is it a trend that's worth worrying about?

Quick Review: Net Smart - How to Thrive Online

As a guy who reads a TON -- and spends a TON of time annotating and highlighting my way through everything that I read -- few books have caught my attention as quickly as Net Smart by Howard Rheingold, a book I flipped open while churning through several hours on the treadmill this weekend.

In Net Smart, Rheingold begins laying out a case for learning to master our attention -- and our participation -- in the online spaces that we are spending more and more of our time in. 

There's an urgency in Rheingold's text -- a sense of "we need to be more deliberate in understanding how digital tools are changing EVERYTHING" -- that I think is oftentimes missing in the conversations that I have about teaching and learning in today's hyper-connected world.

That urgency is apparent from page one, where Rheingold writes:

"The future of digital culture -- yours, mine, and ours -- depends on how well we learn to use the media that have infiltrated, amplified, distracted, enriched and complicated our lives...

"Knowing how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is, like it or not, an essential ingredient to personal success in the twenty-first century."

(Kindle locations 88-102)

Better yet, there's practicality in Rheingold's text. 

Not only do I feel better prepared to articulate the "whys" behind the kinds of practices that I've believe in to the parents that I serve and the peers that I work with, I've picked up several simple ideas that I'm already planning to integrate into the work that I do with the students in my sixth grade classroom.

Long story short: If you're curious about the kinds of key lessons that learners must master in order to efficiently leverage the power of learning online, Net Smart should be on your bookshelf. 

#worthyourcash

#worthyourtime

Are Current #edpolicies Turning Schools into "Brainpower Wastelands"?

Quick question:  How many times have you heard a politician claim that "schools just need to learn to do more with less" in the past few years?

Bajillions, right? 

The simple truth is that most communities are flat broke, and EVERYONE -- including people working in private sector -- are being asked to do more with less.  Productivity just plain matters in an era when nobody has two nickels to rub together.

And while it might surprise you, I don't have ANY trouble with the suggestion that schools find ways to get more out of the resources that they currently have.

I'm just as likely to think conservatively as the next guy, and the way I see it, if I have to find ways to stick to a budget and to stretch a buck, governments should do the exact same thing.

More importantly, I'm CONVINCED that ANY organization -- particularly those that rely on human capacity to drive growth -- CAN get more out of the resources that they currently have at their disposal as long as they take the right steps.

Need proof? 

Then pick up Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown.

After spending years studying leadership in some of the world's most profitable companies, Wiseman and McKeown come to a startling conclusion:  Multipliers -- the term that Wiseman and McKeown give to successful leaders -- can get TWICE as much out of their employees as their peers.

Think about the implications of that fact, y'all.  Imagine being able to DOUBLE the productivity of schools without adding ANY resources at all. 

#winning

Read This: McDonalds Enters The Age of Transparency

Let’s start with a simple truth: The waistlines of the average American are spreading at an alarming rate.  As things currently stand, 1 out of every 3 US adults are obese -- and at the rate we're going, fully half of all American adults will be overweight by the year 2030. 

That's simply horrifying news. 

It means more Americans will suffer from diabetes and die of heart disease -- and that more Americans will be saddled with the crippling medical costs associated with the long-term care of those illnesses.

So who should we hold accountable for this national nightmare?

If your neighbors are anything like mine, they've probably spent the better part of the past decade pointing their collectively fat fingers at the menus of fast-food joints.  "If THEY were more responsible about the food THEY sell," the thinking goes, "WE wouldn't weigh a thousand pounds."

The narrative just feels right, doesn't it? 

And it's a narrative that fast-food companies have done little to refute, no matter how damaging it is to their corporate reputations. 

After all, when you can "Biggie Size" your already ridiculously large portion of fries or order your very own "Angus Thickburger" -- which is essentially a small cow slapped on a Kaiser roll -- it's hard to see fast-food companies as anything BUT a part of the problem.

Which is why McDonald's recent decision to post the calorie count for EVERY SINGLE item on their menu boards -- detailed in this Larry Popelka Bloomberg Businessweek bit --  is so incredibly interesting. 

With that one decision, McDonald's -- a company that health advocates love to hate -- has become a part of the obesity solution simply because they've given individuals the information that they need to make healthier decisions. 

But more importantly, with that one decision, McDonalds has started to change the narrative around their own company. 

No longer are they the corporate punching bag serving food that no one should be eating. Instead, they're the company that's open and honest -- even when honest is ugly -- about the best and the worst of what they offer.  That openness and honesty matters more to consumers today than ever before. 

As Popelka explains:

Most consumers want and expect corporations to be more like people. Those that demonstrate through their actions that they have a human side by being honest and open—but not perfect—are loved. Cold, secretive corporations are not trusted.

Better yet, my guess is that the transparency that McDonald's has brought to their own menu will result in even greater changes down the road. 

The undeniable truth is that the menu board isn't looking all that hot right now, with item after item of high calorie, high fat crap that everyone knows is killing us one bite at a time.

To further solidify the trust that they're building with consumers by being open about what they're selling, McDonald's is going to HAVE to add some healthier options to their menu. Over time, the transparency that they've brought to the conversation about their products will become a tool for holding themselves accountable for creating something better.

So what does this all have to do with schools? 

We live in a world where transparency has become a basic expectation that consumers have for the organizations in their lives -- and while transparency can be intimidating, to ignore that expectation is a risk that isn't worth taking. 

What's more, when you're completely open with the community that you serve, people will embrace you for what you are rather than criticize you for what you should be. 

We may be a fat nation, but we're also pretty darn forgiving -- kind of like the elastic waistbands in our stretchy pants -- especially when we're convinced that the organizations we support are doing their best to move in a positive direction.

Any of this make sense?

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Related Radical Reads:

Essentials for Principals: Communicating and Connecting with Social Media [Excerpt]

Essentials for Principals: Communicating and Connecting with Social Media  [Handouts]

What are YOU Saying about Social Media in Schools?

 

Making Teamwork Meaningful in a PLC at Work

So it's a pretty big day in Radical Nation.

Solution Tree finished the cover design for my fourth book, Making Teamwork Meaningful: Leading Progress Driven Collaboration in a PLC at Work -- which I co-authored with Parry Graham and Matt Wight, two of the best principals I've ever had the chance to work with. 

Check it out:

(click to enlarge)

It's designed to introduce readers to sets of tangible strategies for tackling five common frustrations that often stall professional learning communities:

• Getting the right people into the right collaborative places.
• Making collaboration work for singletons and teachers in small schools.
• Designing a master schedule that facilitiates PLC priorities. 
• Building a system of interventions to address the needs of every student.
• Increasing the collaborative capacity of faculty members and learning teams.

Our goal was to remind the leaders of struggling learning communities that there ARE practical steps that they can take in order to help EVERY learning team to make progress and to move forward together -- and early reactions to the content that we've put together have been really positive.

I think what I like the best about MTM is the fact that we use regular examples of leadership and progress BEYOND schools to make our key points. 

Lessons drawn from disastrous Amazonian expeditions, successful stock market analysts, intelligent medical practitioners in America's delivery rooms, and the principles that drive progress in the natural world make the text more relevant, engaging and unique. 

Needless to say, I'm excited to see what y'all think of it when it's finally published! 

 Look for it in January of 2013. 

#jazzed

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Related Radical Reads:

Building a Professional Learning Community at Work

Teaching the iGeneration

Communicating and Connecting with Social Media