Additional Links Worth a Look!

The Case for the Missing R (this article by VT educators is one of many good ones that can be found in this summer's
FREE online issue of Educational Leadership: Improving Schools from Within)

Towards a General Theory of SRI's Intentional Learning Communities - a thought provoking piece, useful for coaches and participants.

Classroom Pedal Desks! (OK, they ARE expensive...but what an intriguing idea!  Any wellness/PE grants available out there?)

Grant Wiggins Quotes

(post from Kim Marshall in the Marshall Memo, issue 591 - a GREAT resource for busy educators at Marshallmemo.com)

            We lost a great educator and thinker last month. Grant Wiggins’s work with Jay McTighe on backwards curriculum unit design, assessment, and school improvement has made a huge difference in countless schools and elevated the entire profession. Here is a collection of his thoughts from recent years on three major topics:

Assessment and feedback

“Students should be presumed innocent of understanding until proven guilty by the preponderance of the evidence.”

“Results are what counts. You have to measure.”     

“Teachers over-plan and under-assess.”

“The more you teach without finding out who understands the information and who doesn’t, the greater the likelihood that only already-proficient students will succeed.”

“Practicing for a standardized test to raise the scores is like practicing for your physical exam to become healthy. It mistakes measures for goals.”

“Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning. Basically, feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal.”

“Students are entitled to a more educative and user-friendly assessment system. They deserve far more feedback – and opportunities to use it – as part of the local assessment process. Those tasks should recur, as in the visual and performing arts and in sports, so there are many chances to get good at vital work. When assessment properly focuses teaching and learning in this way, student self-assessment and self-adjustment become a critical part of all instruction…”

“If you really understand the topic, you should have no trouble handling a question that looks a little different from the questions the teacher asked. If you learned only by rote, however, a novel question will stump you.”

“Assessment tasks must model and demand important real-world work. Focused and accountable teaching requires ongoing assessment of the core tasks that embody the aims of schooling: whether students can wisely transfer knowledge with understanding in simulations of complex adult intellectual tasks. Only by ensuring that the assessment system models such (genuine) performance will student achievement and teaching be improved over time.”

“What makes any assessment in education formative is not merely that it precedes summative assessments, but that the performer has opportunities, if results are less than optimal, to reshape the performance to better achieve the goal. This is how all highly successful computer games work.”

Improving teaching and learning

“The point of school is not to get good at school.”

“No one masters something they are not passionate about.”

“By the very nature of the job of teaching, we are prone to be insensitive (literally) to the actual daily experience of our students, what they feel, unless we get outside of ourselves by acts of will.”

“For the majority of learners, school is a place where the teacher has the answers and classroom questions are intended to find out who knows them.” (with Jay McTighe)

“Like the music or athletic coach, the classroom teacher’s job is to help the student ‘play the game’ of the expert.”

“Expert coaches uniformly avoid overloading performers with too much or too technical information. They tell the performers one important thing they noticed that, if changed, will likely yield immediate and noticeable improvement.”

“Reform is strongly needed in many schools. Many teachers are just not currently capable of engaging and deeply educating the kids in front of them, especially in the upper grades. Why can’t we just admit this?” (from an open letter to Diane Ravitch)

“[T]eachers can be remarkably thin-skinned when someone questions their methods or decisions, and many of us resist seeking or receiving feedback from students, parents, colleagues, and supervisors. When students fail to learn, some teachers end up blaming the students, without an honest investigation of where student fault ends and teacher responsibility begins.”

“My question is basic, history teachers. Given that most history textbooks are comprehensive and reasonably well-written, why do you feel the need to talk so much? Your colleagues in science and English, for example, do not feel the same urge.”

“Without regular opportunities to consider, observe, and analyze best practice and receive

helpful, non-evaluative feedback, how likely are teachers to engage in continual professional improvement?” (with Jay McTighe)

“Being willing and able to rethink requires a safe and supportive environment for questioning assumptions and habits, as well as a curriculum designed to foster thinking,”

Backwards planning

“When curriculum is defined as a linear march through stuff covered once (and where no pre-tests are ever done), it is inevitable that we end up exaggerating differences and constantly talking (wrongly) about too many kids ‘falling behind.’ Falling behind what? Some mythical average ‘pace’ of teaching in a single way?”

“What we need to see more clearly is that the common learner failure to transfer is not a student weakness or a teaching deficit but a mistake in planning. You have to design backward from the goal of transfer if you want to achieve it… Too often, though, teachers merely teach, then ask in their tests: Did you learn my lesson?”

“To design a school curriculum backwards from the goal of autonomous transfer requires a deliberate and transparent plan for helping the student rely less and less on teacher hand-holding and scaffolds.” (with Jay McTighe)

“We contend that teachers can best raise test scores over the long haul by teaching the key ideas and processes contained in content standards in rich and engaging ways; by collecting evidence of student understanding of that content through robust local assessments rather than one-shot standardized testing; and by using engaging and effective instructional strategies that help students explore core concepts through inquiry and problem solving.”

“Knowing that you’re a novice who’s a long way from true mastery is not inherently debilitating. On the contrary, having a worthy, far-off goal and tracking your progress in closing the gap are key to mastery in all walks of life.”

Vermonters Mandate Multi-State Legislative Consolidation

May 21, 2015

Today, in a move prompted by the desire to save money and improve legislating opportunities, Vermonters called for Legislative Consolidation that could lead to the formation of one state legislature for all of Northern New England.  As one citizen explained: “We’re thinkin’ that having one legislature for Vermont, and say, for Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and maybe also New York and Connecticut, and possibly Rhode Island, would make things simpler and easier to understand.  As everyone knows, bigger means less complex, and less complex is always cheaper and better.”

“This is NOT a mandate”, explained the chair of Vermont Citizens for Legislative Consolidation.  “We’ve simply decided to require that all New England legislators, especially those in small states like Vermont and Rhode Island, shift their entire focus to a participating in a lengthy series of meetings, facilitated by people who think this is a good idea.  If Vermont’s legislators decide NOT to merge with the legislature of at least one other New England State, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns will conduct a Legislative Quality Review (LQR) to determine if the VT Legislature is doing a good job.  If the Legislature’s performance is found to be sub-par, the VLCT will require it to merge, most likely with with a geographically contiguous state (probably New Hampshire, since it already kind of looks like Vermont, only upside-down).”   

When asked how this move would save money and improve legislation, one proponent responded this way: “Well, maybe we’d have fewer legislators, for one thing.  And we’d have one budget for two or more states, and that would be like having a bigger state, and then maybe we could fire at least one governor, and maybe a whole passel of legislators and state workers.  Besides, Vermont’s issues aren’t all that unique.  What’s the diff?”

The Characteristics of a Good Professional Dialogue

The following summary is Item #7 in Issue 583 of The Marshall Memo, a wonderful resource for all educators (marshallmemo.com)

The Characteristics of a Good Professional Dialogue

(Originally titled “The Art of Dialogue”)

            In this Educational Leadership article, Oscar Graybill (Socratic Seminars International)

and Lois Brown Easton (author/consultant/coach) describe four types of interaction, each of which has its place:

-   Conversations – convivial, casual, friendly talk about personal and social matters;

-   Discussions – there’s a purpose, often to make a decision; people may choose sides;

-   Debate – a structured form of discussion in which the format dictates taking sides;

-   Dialogue – people inquiring into ideas and building their understanding of an issue without pressure to choose a side, be “right,” or make a decision.

“When members of a group are just trying to understand an issue, they may find that dialogue is all they need,” say Graybill and Easton. “Dialogue doesn’t just happen naturally; educators must consciously learn and practice it.” Here are their guidelines for a group engaging in a productive dialogue:

-   Group members speak for themselves, not trying to represent others’ views.

-   Members avoid making grand pronouncements, instead connecting what they know and believe to their experiences, influences in their lives, and particular sources of information.

-   Members refrain from characterizing others’ views in a critical spirit, keeping in mind that the goal is to understand, not persuade.

-   Members listen with resilience, “hanging in” when they hear something that’s hard to hear.

-   Members don’t stay confused; they ask for clarification when it’s needed.

-   Members don’t raise their hands; they take turns speaking and listen to what others are saying.

-   Members share airtime and refrain from interrupting others.

-   Members can “pass” or “pass for now” without needing to justify themselves.

-   Members discuss ideas rather than one another’s opinions.

-   Members talk with one another, not just the leader.

-   Members respect confidentiality.

“The Art of Dialogue” by Oscar Graybill and Lois Brown Easton in Educational Leadership, April 2015 (Vol. 72, #7, online only), http://bit.ly/1yLMzZp; Graybill can be reached at Oscar@socraticseminars.com, Easton at leastoners@aol.com.

Meeting Students' Needs through Scaffolding

This two-pager from the engage NY website is an excellent overview of scaffolding strategies.
Meeting Students' Needs through Scaffolding: 

• explains how scaffolding and differentiation are similar and different;
• explains the difference between "front-end" scaffolding and "back-end" scaffolding;
• provides examples of both front-end and back-end scaffolding in the context of helping students read complex text;
• offers examples that can be used across disciplines and grade levels.

What's the Story? A Dynamic Learning Experience for Vermont Secondary Students

Check out What's the Story? an AMAZING opportunity for Vermont secondary students, sponsored by Middlebury College, Middlebury College's Breadloaf School of English, and the Vermont-Breadloaf Teacher Network.  And while you're there, scroll down and click on "Tracking My Learning" to find some terrific, comprehensive rubrics that focus on Self-Direction, Clear and Effective Communication, and informed and Integrative Thinking.

If you know a high school student who would be interested in this unique opportunity, nudge her/him to apply!

Praise Be! Vermont Board of Education's Formal Statement on School Consolidation and Governance (H.361)

On March 18, the Vermont State Board of Education provided testimony to the VT Senate Education Committee concerning House Bill 361.  The testimony is the State Board's formal statement on School Consolidation and Governance. Here is an excerpt from page 1 of that testimony:

"The bill includes 36 sections which vary dramatically in scope and focus. As a group, they do not form a clear vision or direction for educational governance.  The explicit policy goals of this effort are to increase educational quality and opportunities; and control educational expenditures. But these goals and how they will be attained are only obliquely addressed. The assumption appears to be that by re-arranging a constellation of diverse and discrete elements, this will lead to a coalescence of forces that will produce desired outcomes. (Remaining elements are to be resolved by the state board). Clear purposes need to be explicitly tied to defined factors that have demonstrated links to the desired outcomes. "

DO read the full text of the testimony:

Vermont State Board of Education

Statement on H. 361 

For the Senate Education Committee 

March 18 2015