The Tempered Radical

New Slide: Teaching IS Leading

I haven't got long to write today...I'm off to meet a former student who needs a bit of advice and guidance....but I had to get this off my chest:

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More later,

Bill

Three Tricks to Retaining Teachers

Have you ever noticed that the constant stream of articles about the teacher retention crisis in America's schools never really ends? 

Poke through Google and you'll find bits on attrition in math and science, where candidates can easily move into the private sector and earn significantly more over a lifetime, and on the costs that attrition carries for schools and districts.  You can find reports drafted by national organizations like the Education Commission of the States and the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.  

Ed Week and Edutopia are writing about teacher retention.  So is Cal State University and the Virginia Department of Education.  

And in every case, the voice of practicing classroom teachers is missing!

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Sure, if you look hard enough, you can probably dig up a quote or two from classroom teachers in all of these sources---but only after hearing from authors, researchers and various other "experts in the field" who are seen as more knowledgeable on the factors driving people from our classrooms than us teacher-types. 

So let me bring some reality to this conversation, built on nothing more than my 16 years of experience as a practitioner. 

New Slide: Understanding Learning Outcomes

Here's an interesting question for you:  If I dropped into your classroom tomorrow and asked your students what skills or key concepts they were working to master, how would they answer?

Would the results be the same if I stopped into other classrooms on your hallway?  Would some students know more about the learning expectations that your school and district have set for them?  Would they know less than your students?  Why?

The reason I ask is because I'm a stubborn son-of-a-gun who worked pretty hard to resist the ever-so-popular "You-Must-Post-Your-Learning-Objective-On-Your-Board-Every-Day" craze that has been sweeping education for the past few years.  At first, I just didn't bother to post my objective at all, hoping no one would bother me.  Once my administrators started to call me out for not having my objective posted, I wrote a generic one up and left it on the board for about three months. 

Talk about passive-aggressive, huh?

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The source of my resistance was simple:  No one had ever convinced me that writing my objective on the board every day---something that was difficult to do in my language arts class, where learning objectives aren't sequential and where lessons can address multiple objectives in one period---would pay off in tangible student learning results.  And one thing I've learned is that practices or policies that require more work had better darn well be worth it!

My other beef was that we were required to write objectives in a way that I KNEW my students wouldn't understand---the language was just too sophisticated for 12-year-olds.  "They'd have a better chance of figuring out what they were supposed to be learning if I wrote those things in hieroglyphics!" I'd argue, "So what's the point of spending my already limited time on something I know won't work?"

Being the kind of guy I am, I took my resistance a step further, reading about a dozen books on assessment trying to find an expert who said that posting objectives was pointless.  I figured that would be reason enough to end a practice that I openly doubted.

Here's the hitch:  There ISN'T A SINGLE expert that thinks posting objectives is unimportant! 

In fact, every book that I read argued that posting objectives is one of the easiest way to improve student learning results.  The real clincher for me:  Bob Marzano---an edu-researcher-extraordinaire whose work I respect greatly---has shown that making students aware of expected outcomes of classroom lessons can increase student learning by 20%.

That's when I finally made a commitment to working out a system for communicating expected outcomes to my kids in student-friendly language and to sharing those outcomes as often as possible.  While I still haven't made daily communication around learning targets a part of my teaching routine (routines are hard to change for stubborn people, y'all), the parts are in place and I know my instruction will change in a positive way as a result. 

Need any help in making YOUR learning goals transparent to your students?

Then check out these two Radical posts:

Writing Student Friendly Learning Goals

More on Writing Student Friendly Learning Goals

You might also be interested in this sample of a unit overview sheet that I've started using with my students in class:

Western Europe Learning Targets

Hope this helps you to embrace sharing expected outcomes with your students sooner than I did!  It's a practical strategy with proven results that you can start using tomorrow.

New Slide: Digitally Resilient

One of the first lessons that I try to teach colleagues interested in using digital tools in their teaching and learning is that they’ve got to develop a high level of digital resilience because stumbling blocks are simply inevitable in any school-based technology project.

"Don't give up at the first sign of trouble," I say, "because it certainly won't be the last!"

 

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The question I'm forced to ask, though, is can we honestly expect teachers to integrate technology into their instruction when we can't guarantee that they'll have consistent access to the proper tools to do that work? 

Each time a carefully crafted digital learning experience fails in a school because of blocked websites, antiquated tools, or technology decisions that are not aligned with a new vision for teaching and learning, integration efforts take a punch to the gut.

Enough punches to the gut and any teacher is bound to be left reeling, don't you think?

Stuffing Kids with Content

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Clear Vision of Intended Learning

So here's an interesting question:  If students cannot self-assess without a clear vision of the intended learning, what is your learning team doing to make sure that students understand the expected outcomes for your lessons?

 

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Embracing What Could Be?

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Pencils Can't Fix This

In response to my recent slide on the students of tomorrow and the classrooms of yesterday, regular Radical reader Mike H wrote:

So I showed this slide to the department chairs I work with from middle school to high school and 15 new teachers of the county. We have a 1:1 so I talked about the need to use the laptops our students to bring to school, as well as the need to make our students think more critically. But, alas, overwhelmingly, the concern was the end of course exams.

Honestly, every time I hear teachers talk about the importance of preparing kids for their end-of-course exams, I wonder where we've gone wrong as a nation.   There are greater challenges that many our students will walk out of schools knowing nothing about.

So I made another slide.  It shows an abandoned baby struggling to survive in the slums of Lucknow, India, and it broke my heart.  I almost couldn't bear to look at it.

But I also couldn't handle the implications of a world where children struggle to survive in one country while others sit oblivious, studying for final exams in another.  The pain in this picture encouraged me to rethink the kinds of content that our kids need to wrestle with in order to become responsible global citizens.

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Many thanks to Andrew McLagan, the photographer who shot this original image, for reminding me that I have a responsibility to prepare my students for something more. 

A Place for Gathering. . .

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When Teachers Fail. . .

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