As I was reading through your assignments on Shadowing a Student, I was struck by a seeming disconnect between the learning environments described and those of your observation summaries. Many of you, when viewing instruction through the lens of a students describe a fairly consistent theme: Students working daily in fairly passive learning environments with limited adult interaction, in spite of heavy investments in the belief about the power of relationship. In many cases you describe negative behaviors, a lack of engagement, and/or a lack of connection to the leaning environment.
I'm wondering your thoughts on this? Focus on teacher v. focus on an individual student you wanted to know more about. Why the seeming disconnect? How would you reconcile this as a leader?
Can you reconcile this with what you know from Ginsberg's work on Motivation and culturally relevant instruction? (PBIS, RTI, Ratio of Positive Adult interactions, etc. are not mutually exclusive of this body of work).
Thoughts...
Behavior management is a critical element successful schools must have a handle on. Student behavior and a staff's approach to behavior management can impact student's growth and achievement both positively and negatively. Strategies associated with school wide behavior management systems, such as PBIS or Foundations, can help a staff and students turn the focus to the expected behaviors. This flip in focus gives staff an opportunity to positively recognize and lift up some of our most compliant students. This seems counterintuitive, but leads to a culture of relationships and school connectedness.
ReplyDeleteStrong and trusting relationships with students and staff are the foundation of student motivation. The relationships must seem unwavering to the student and focus on both contingent and non contingent attention. Students need to have their basic needs fulfilled to begin developing intrinsic motivation: acknowledgment, recognition, attention, belonging, purpose, competence, nurturing, stimulation/change - Sprick. It is easy to say we are here to educate children and you can't teach them what they won't learn. However, educating a child goes far beyond teaching the curriculum. If we are to motivate students to grow and achieve at high levels, we need to consider each student as an individual and focus on their needs.
I wish I new the answer... but, here's my hunch. All too often, we see 'relationship building' as something we do in the first few weeks of school. While "Excited to Learn" has activities that are both good for the beginning of the year and doing the year, I see teachers finding it easier to fit these in before the 'grind' of curriculum, pacing guides, testing creeps in and takes over the instructional schedule.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like that a large part of Ginsberg's work encourages us to look at the classroom through the lens of a student - and my experience is that as instructional leaders, we spend a great deal of time watching the instruction - that allows for there to be a disconnect between the instruction or lesson and the enactment as experienced by students.
Additionally, we have to attend to the parts of the motivational framework that deal with competence and meaning -- if we spend all of our time in inclusion and attitude, we neglect to see the work in which we engage our students as an extension of how we are responding to their individual learning needs.
Unfortunately, especially in schools with a great number of traditionally underserved students, we allow student behavior to dictate the kind of work we 'think they can do' - misinterpreting affective and cognitive engagement. With the best of intentions, we see teachers lower expectations in an attempt to help student succeed.
So, what do we do about it? First, we have highlight the disconnect between inclusion and competence and meaning - and I think viewing instruction through the lens of a student can be an excellent way to do this. I have seen more and more 'learning walks' happening in school where the attention is to the academic behaviors of the students and the depth of their understanding, rather than their compliance with completing the work.
Next, we need to support teachers in their growth and understanding of what works with struggling learners - help them see examples where engaging and rigorous instruction is yielding both engagement and learning. This might involve having them visit a colleague's classroom, or being a part of a collaborative effort to design lessons that fit with the Motivational Framework through lesson design or studio classrooms.
Data plays an important role, but it needs to be 'small' data -- grades, attendance, looking at student work (Ginsberg has lots of great examples in her text "Transformative Professional Learning") rather than always looking at district or state-wide assessment data.
I was always amazed at how through the National Board process, I learned a great deal about teaching an entire subset of struggling students by being curious and focusing my efforts on just a few students.
Finally, with support and encouragement, we can help teachers understand that part of teaching the whole child and acknowledging the often traumatic circumstances from which they come does not mean that we do not make the work 'easier' - that we honor them more by providing rich and rigorous learning experiences.
From the student shadow I did, the students were passively engaged, and the teacher did care a great deal about there students, and with minor tweaks, the lesson could have been a far richer, more engaging experience where students were doing work with a much higher depth of knowledge.
-- Katie T
I recently my read a blog post where a teacher talked about how he tracks his positive interactions with students on a daily basis. He then reviews them often and plans for positive interactions with particular students based on student need for higher ratios and students who he is not making regular meaningful connections with. As I read his pst it made me think of how you brought forward that building relationships with students in intentional ways tends to be a beginning of the year endeavor. I found his approach to be interesting and thoughtful.
DeleteRenae,
DeleteThank you for sharing about the idea of tracking positive interactions and then planning for them in instructional practice. I look forward to sharing the idea with my teams.
I wish I new the answer... but, here's my hunch. All too often, we see 'relationship building' as something we do in the first few weeks of school. While "Excited to Learn" has activities that are both good for the beginning of the year and during the year, I see teachers finding it easier to fit these in before the 'grind' of curriculum, pacing guides, testing creeps in and takes over the instructional schedule instead of using these strategies as part of their on-going instruction.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like that a large part of Ginsberg's work encourages us to look at the classroom through the lens of a student - and my experience is that as instructional leaders, we spend a great deal of time watching the instruction - that allows for there to be a disconnect between the instruction or lesson and the enactment as experienced by students.
Additionally, we have to attend to the parts of the motivational framework that deal with competence and meaning -- if we spend all of our time in inclusion and attitude, we neglect to see the work in which we engage our students as an extension of how we are responding to their individual learning needs.
Unfortunately, especially in schools with a great number of traditionally underserved students, we allow student behavior to dictate the kind of work we 'think they can do' - misinterpreting affective and cognitive engagement. With the best of intentions, we see teachers lower expectations in an attempt to help students succeed.
So, what do we do about it? First, we have highlight the disconnect between inclusion and competence and meaning - and I think viewing instruction through the lens of a student can be an excellent way to do this. I have seen more and more 'learning walks' happening in school where the attention is to the academic behaviors of the students and the depth of their understanding, rather than their compliance with completing the work.
Next, we need to support teachers in their growth and understanding of what works with struggling learners - help them see examples where engaging and rigorous instruction is yielding both engagement and learning. This might involve having them visit a colleague's classroom, or being a part of a collaborative effort to design lessons that fit with the Motivational Framework through lesson design or studio classrooms.
Data plays an important role, but it needs to be 'small' data -- grades, attendance, looking at student work (Ginsberg has lots of great examples in her text "Transformative Professional Learning"), student observation data, etc in addition to looking at district or state-wide assessment data.
I was always amazed at how through the National Board process, I learned a great deal about teaching an entire subset of struggling students by being curious and focusing my efforts on just a few students.
Finally, with support and encouragement, we can help teachers understand that part of teaching the whole child and acknowledging the often traumatic circumstances from which they come does not mean that we do not make the work 'easier' - that we honor them more by providing rich and rigorous learning experiences.
From the student shadow I did, the students were passively engaged, and the teacher did care a great deal about there students, and with minor tweaks, the lesson could have been a far richer, more engaging experience where students were doing work with a much higher depth of knowledge.
-- Katie T
I will start by stealing a few lines from previous comments. Katie mentioned, "Data plays an important role, but it needs to be 'small' data...." What raises student achievement? Student demographics, class size, school size, changing student attitudes, curriculum reform, computers in the classroom, schedule changes, improving teachers’ content knowledge?
ReplyDeleteAll these factors can play a role, but none has been a home run. School leaders have come to the plate and hoped that each of these would be the long ball, and they ended up striking out again and again. “What the research has shown us,” says Wiliam, “is that the only answer is continuous, small improvements – ‘small ball’ if you like. We need to worry about getting to first base before we can make it home.... hitters who come up to the plate and try to hit a home run off every pitch result in - a lot of strikeouts. What we need instead is 'small ball': get a walk to first, steal second, get bunted over to third, and score on a sacrifice fly. Small ball has become less common because of the general trend toward smaller parks and more home runs.... However, all big league managers are still skilled at managing from a small ball perspective, as it is sometimes necessary, especially in critical games. White Sox manager Ozzie Guillén was widely credited for saying his 2005 World Series champion team played not small ball or big inning ball, but "smart ball", which has come to mean a more adaptable strategy.
Good coaches know how to break down performance into its critical individual components. In sports, coaches focus on mechanics, conditioning, and strategy, and have ways to break each of those down, in turn. The U.C.L.A. basketball coach John Wooden, at the first squad meeting each season, even had his players practice putting their socks on. He demonstrated just how to do it: he carefully rolled each sock over his toes, up his foot, around the heel, and pulled it up snug, then went back to his toes and smoothed out the material along the sock’s length, making sure there were no wrinkles or creases. He had two purposes in doing this. First, wrinkles cause blisters. Blisters cost games. Second, he wanted his players to learn how crucial seemingly trivial details could be. “Details create success” was the creed of a coach who won ten N.C.A.A. men’s basketball championships.
Details matter. We need to focus on what we want teachers to change, or change about what they do, and then we have to understand how to support teachers in making those changes.
What is the key to bringing about the continuous, small improvements in learning that add up to significant gains in long-term student achievement? The quality of day-to-day instruction.
The strategy is helping teachers use minute-by-minute, day-by-day data to check for understanding, adjust instruction, and follow up with students who are not yet proficient. Also,"I have seen more and more 'learning walks' happening in school where the attention is to the academic behaviors of the students and the depth of their understanding, rather than their compliance with completing the work. This is critical; less is more. I see a lot of teachers have successful days by checking off completed work, collecting worksheets in a bin. Showing understanding comes in multiple forms and can be so much more engaging and intrinsically rewarding for students. Page 34 of Ginsburg references the "blame" cycle. So often we want to blame a student's deficiencies instead of finding ways to work with them. Where can we get coaching to help these teachers create new ways and teaching styles in their classrooms?
I have two different thoughts that jump into my head about this.
ReplyDeleteFirst, when I walk into classrooms more and more, I have begun to think that the classroom structure has been ignored in most cases. It's like a lost art. The desks or tables are put in away that the teacher couldn't get to a student in the corners if they tried. There is rarely a seating chart and disengaged kids seem to find the teaching blind spots in the classroom. There is chaos when getting things like books because of the placement of books and sometimes the last kid who gets the book, gets a ripped or damaged book. There is an old learning target or objective. Sometimes I see graffiti from kids wanting people to follow them on snapchat and those that can't afford smart phones are left to feel inferior.
I walked into a classroom that had a long term sub in it and this was what the room was like for weeks. We had hired a new teacher, who seems to be excellent, and when I walked into the room two days after she started it was shocking. The desks were organized differently which allowed the teacher to walk to each student. On each desk, in the center was their English book and a peppermint patty with a "thank you" written on it because she wanted to thank them for a good first day. I had an emotional moment because the structure of the room, before any kid had walked in, shows how much she cared about them.
My second thought is it seems so difficult for teachers, in general, to show they care about students through positive interactions. I wonder if all of the legal "Safe Schools" type training where teachers are drilled in all the ways they can't legally interact with students has made teachers afraid to be caring. Such things as telling a student they appreciate that they are coming to class, working hard, and doing homework seems rare. Or trying to build into the lesson plan to talk to students individually about how they are doing. This could be targeted by using data, like attendance or grades but it needs to be equitable too. When I see disengaged students, they seem to be disengaged because no adult tried to engage them personally in what is happening in the classroom. Instead, the adult is either allowing them to be passive (ignoring the student) or the adult is harshly correcting the students behavior (negative interaction) and these two things only build compliant behavior, not an engaged student.