Silent Voices

"They're never this quiet!" --a first ring Cleveland teacher commenting on the behavior of the 220 students sitting in an auditorium taking a My Voice survey.

The set up was the same as in Akron a few weeks ago.  More arm wrestling.  More encouragement to think win-win in school with teachers.  Only this time instead of sharing My Voice results with students, we were administering the My Voice survey.  This school had opted for the paper version and the silent seriousness with which students took the survey was impressive. All 1500 of them in 200+ installments. No one had to shush them.  No one had to ask them to be respectful to the guests.  No one had to pull a student out for horsing around.  We simply showed up, told the students we wanted to hear from them, and their desire to be heard, paradoxically, kept them quiet for the fifteen minutes it takes to complete the survey.

I am more and more convinced that this is how we must move forward in improving our schools.  Not in conference rooms with committees of overworked teachers and administrators trying to decide what is best for the students, but with students themselves as our partners.  In these assemblies I keep saying teachers and students want the same thing:  Students don't want to be bored and teachers don't want to be boring, students do not enter high school so they can drop out and no teacher wants students to drop out, students do not want to be ignorant and teachers do not want their students to be ignorant.  Why then have we been stuck for the past ten years with the same amount of students saying they are bored, the same dropout rate, the same amount of ignorance and, by the way, fairly stagnant test scores?

I don't know the answer.  I do know that if we start listening to students more they will help us find them. I know that if we ask the right questions in all seriousness they will answer in all seriousness. I know the way forward is with the students, not simply on our own, even if on their behalf.

Arm Wrestling 101

Last week I arm wrestled 14 of the biggest students in Akron, Ohio. In 14 separate assemblies in 4 high schools in Akron, I had the task of sharing with the students results of their My Voice survey and asking for their assistance interpreting those numbers and helping the school improve.  Borrowing from Stephen Covey, at the start of each assembly I made a lot of noise about growing up in New York City (close: Jersey City), being an arm wrestling champion in high school (I was in theater), of setting up intramural arm wrestling at Boston College (I helped found a performing arts council), and of knowing that I could pin any student 20 times in 30 seconds.  "The only question," talking the best smack my acting background could muster, "was whether any student in the auditorium thought they could pin me 20 times in 30 seconds."  The testosterone that filled half the assembly hall took care of the rest.

So each time I brought up one of the biggest students in the room.  Each time I flexed a bicep and gave him a chance to back out.  Each time I told him there were two candy bars at stake for 20 pins in 30 seconds. And each time we started the timer, I looked the student in the eye and said, "I want you to win" and put up no fight the first three times. Pin. Pin. Pin. Then I stopped and fought and started the object lesson. "Look at the timer ticking down.  There is no way you can pin me 20 times without my help. Let's cooperate.  You pin me 20 (I let him win again...4) and you let me pin you 20.  Let's cooperate.  There is no way this can happen unless we do that."  Some of the kids pinned me 5 or 6 times.  One young man pinned me 18 times (remember 4 were freebies!) but not 20, not without my help.

About half of the young men got it.  They put aside ego and picked up two candy bars.  The other half could not get there and if they couldn't pin me those one or two times more, it was a stalemate and they walked away empty handed. They understood what I was asking them to do, but could not make the switch from a Win-Lose mindset to a Win-Win mindset. After the fun, teaching the lesson about how high school was like a ticking clock and that they and their teachers would likely stay stuck...same drop out rate, same amount of boredom, same amount of respect for one another...if they didn't start working together was easy. When teachers and students start thinking Win-Win with each other, beginning by listening to the voice of students and taking their point of view seriously, amazing things can happen.

Got Homework?

Every few weeks or so an article pops up in the news about homework.  Yesterday, the Boston Globe (which I won't link too because they are starting a pay for use program on their website) had one discussing some new and, as ever, inconclusive evidence.  For math, yes; for english and social studies, no.  Or something like that.  The disappointment was that the study used data from 1988.  "Anyone working in schools think homework has changed much since 1988?" he asked, on a blog, using the internet.

More helpful are articles like the one last week in the New York Times reporting about the usefulness of "spaced repetition." Or learning about the school district in Los Altos that is using Khan Academy to flip its math classrooms: learn the material at home on Khan Academy and come to school to do homework type activities when a teachers assistance would be most helpful.

Most of the articles, the Globe included set up a false dichotomy between kids who hate homework on the one hands and parents and teachers who like homework on the other.  But this is false.  Kids don't hate doing extra academic type work at home.  They hate busy work.  Work that doesn't contribute to their learning.  I know a third grader who spent a great deal of free time for months collecting shark teeth and researching sharks on the internet. I know a fifth grader who, having learned about Pangea in school wrote a movie script about a group of kids who time traveled back to see if the theory was accurate.--not for homework, but for fun.  I know many, many students who read books outside of those assigned in school.

The question is not whether homework works or not.  Student can, do, and want to learn outside of the classroom.  The question is: How do we assign homework that students actually want do do?

Fall Out

I have a five year old friend who has been in school for about a week now. When I asked him how school is going, he reported, "I had a great day today. I learned something which I forget, and had outdoor recess." He captures it, doesn't he? Not just the one day, but the entire experience. When I look back at my entire educational experience, like Tom, I can say honestly, "I had a great educational experience, I learned somethings which I have forgotten, and had outdoor recess"--I played with friends at sports and in co-curricular activities, we ate animated lunches together discussing the latest liaisons, we receded from the academic grind into crisp fall days, and slushy New York winters, and bright spring afternoons.

Undoubtedly there is an accumulation of learning and knowledge which persist despite the memory gaps in the particulars of every math or science or history class. What I think Tom's response calls attention to is the fact that from the student's side of the school experience, as distinct from the adult's side, the real energy, the part that sticks with you, is what happens "outside" explicit learning experiences--in the interactions between teachers and students, over lunch with some students, inside a football or soccer stadium when students see their teachers supporting something they love to do. In a sense, everything not directly curricular is co-curricular and has the potential to engage students in meaningful ways. This is the "fall out" of having the privilege of interacting with young people for six or seven hours every day.  

When you consider your busy week ahead, what time can you give to a recess outside--literally and figuratively?

What's New?

And so begins another school year. In the past three weeks, I have participated in one way or another in opening events in 6 school districts. In one I was an opening day keynoter, in another I had students helping me deliver professional development via a systems game to their teachers, and in the others it was straight out pre-student arrival PD about Aspirations. By all accounts, schools have never been busier. It wouldn't be too big a stretch to say that before a single student sat at a desk, administrators and teachers were already feeling behind. They were excited, eager, and energetic and wondering how they had already been lapped when the official starting pistol had yet to be fired.

This year the new entry seems to be 21st Century Skills. But schools are not adopting that effort as a replacement to improving literacy or numeracy--or just coming online science and/or social studies testing. They are not side-lining common core standards or dropping their new anti-bullying program to work on Innovation and Collaboration. 21st Century Skills, the PD associated with it, the time committed to it in classrooms, the effort to assess whether the skills are being taught or not is not being done in lieu of the dozens of other initiatives schools have adopted over the years. It is just being added--some might say "piled"--on.

The big question is: Is this sustainable? All the programs are good programs. All the skills--from traditional literacy skills to the more avant guarde communication--seem critical to teach if our students are to be successful. But where will already breathless educators find the stamina to keep up this pace? One answer is from the students themselves. Not just as inspiration for doing whatever it takes, but also as partners in the effort. That's a goal I have for this year: Helping the schools I support develop deeper and fuller partnerships between teachers and students.

What's new at your school?

Creativity Contest

This is a committee I worked on to help promote and assess creativity in schools. It is the one thing we need more of in education and the one thing that gets squeezed out by shrinking budgets and growing standardization. Please check it out and spread the word!

Announcing the EdSteps Student Work Contest!

The EdSteps Student Work Contest has officially launched. To win, submit work from March 14- May 14th 2011 in the areas of Creativity or Problem Solving. For a chance at one of two $1,000 gift cards, all you must do is submit student work in the areas of Creativity or Problem Solving at www.edsteps.org. For each piece of student work that you submit, you will receive one entry for the contest. For example, if you submit 500 pieces of student work, you will receive 500 entries to the contest. There are no limits on the number of entries that one may have. Winners will be contacted on May 15, 2011. If you have any questions, please feel free to email info@edsteps.org.

To find out more information about the contest visit www.edsteps.org.

Is Cheating Becoming Standard?

Interesting article in USA Today Yesterday about teachers and administrators who have been caught cheating on high stakes standardized tests. The crib notes version is that after a particular set of students' tests get flagged for showing an unusually big increase from one year to the next followed by an equally suspicious drop to normal the following year, an investigation is conducted. The uptick frequently turns out to be a teacher who gave students the answers ahead of time. Another way a set of tests can get flagged is by a software program that keeps track of erasures and blows the whistle when there are a lot of erasures that have been changed from incorrect to correct answers. The culprit there can be a teacher or an administrator with a number two pencil post-test.

This is inevitable right? The problem with standardized testing is not with the tests. Nor is it with wanting to hold schools and teachers accountable for making sure their students are able to meet certain standards. The problem is when the stakes that are tied to the tests impact the financial bottom line--whether that's someone's personal bank account or a school's ability to get government money. Doping came into sports when big money came into sports. People who are in the upper echelons of the tax bracket seek loopholes. White collar crime is rarely for chump change. Cheaters do prosper provided they don't get caught.

We need a less fiscally pressured approach to accountability in schools. It's a corruption of the learning process to tie its outcomes to dollar signs. That corruption in turn corrupts people who probably did not get into education to cheat their students out of a realistic assessment of their progress.