I am becoming more and more distressed by the conversations I am seeing in the national media that blame “bad” teachers for all the ills in society.  Take Newsweek’s March cover that claimed that the key to saving American education was to ”fire bad teachers.”  Not only do these messages misappropriate blame and over-simplify the very complex problems we face in schools, they unintentially kill good teaching.

Case in point. The other day I was helping a teacher rethink how she planned her lessons. We were working on creating more engaging, rigorous learning experiences for students. After I explained how to create spaces in the classroom to allow her students to learn how to deal with the messiness of learning, she said, “This is great Robyn, but what do I do when my principal walks in and sees all this messiness going on. I could lose my job!”  Unfortunately, I hear the same lament time and time again. I would love to teach this way, but …my principal, the state tests, the curriculum, my district mandate, the parents, etc.

To quote Seth Godin in his latest book Linchpin, “Great teachers are wonderful. They change lves. We need them. The problem is that most schools don’t like great teachers. They’re organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average.”

There are several reasons why schools don’t work, but firing the bad teachers won’t fix them, especially when the same systems that prevent really great teaching remain firmly in place.

So what do we do? For starters, we have to stop teaching scared. We have to stop letting fear keep us from doing what’s right and take the risk for the sake of our kids.  We have to do what master teachers have been doing for years — ignore the distracting noise outside, close your door, and teach extraordinarily.  We have to stop conforming and doing what is safe.  Instead, we must dare to be good, really good, not at our jobs, but at our calling to help students become great learners.   And most of all, we have to fight every day to get better at what we do, not because of some mandate or because we are afraid of being labeled a “bad teacher” and end up on the cover of Newsweek, but because it is the right and best thing to do. We owe it to our kids. We owe it to ourselves.

Spring is undeniably here and students (and probably a few teachers) have begun the countdown to summer.

Take a moment to think about your students who have made progress this year in terms of becoming more independent learners, beefing up their study habits, or learning to ask for help.

Chances are you’ve spent a lot of time providing the support, stability and strategies these students need in order to succeed.  Before the end of the year crunch is upon you, why not take a few minutes to make some notes about these students to share with the teachers they’ll have next year? That way students can continue moving in the right direction rather than reverting to their old ways at the beginning of the next school year. You might also enlist the teachers in the grades below you to do the same so that you have a head start with the incoming group.

Here are a few tips to get you going.

• Keep it brief. Come August, teachers will be busy preparing for the year. Create something they will actually read. If a teacher needs more information, she’ll know where to find you.
• Keep it objective. Every kid deserves a clean slate – just because you and a student didn’t gel doesn’t mean it will be the same story with next year’s teacher. Notes such as “Remind Tony to copy his homework assignments in the first few weeks,” can be helpful to the teacher and ensure that Tony gets off to a great start. Writing “Tony is such a space cadet he can’t remember to copy his homework assignments even though they’re right in front of his face!” may capture your feelings, but it isn’t as helpful to Tony or the next teacher.
• Keep it specific. Try to highlight the most important things you learned that will help the student start strong next year. Instead of “Maria needs lots of support,” try “Maria has a hard time breaking down complex directions. Get her to explain directions in her own words before starting complicated assignments.”
• Keep it academic. Chances are the other teachers in the school already know who has a standing reservation in the principal’s office. But only you know what students’ academic challenges are and how to address them.
• Just keep it. Let next year’s teachers know now that you have notes you’d like to share with them. If you meet in departments, sharing “student success notes” might be a great agenda item for a pre-service meeting. Team leaders, counselors or grade-level administrators might also be interested in collecting and distributing notes in the fall.

–Claire Lambert

As you know by now, I am looking for ways to make the professional development I provide more valuable to teachers. Last week I tried something new in a workshop I was conducting for a group of teachers. Rather than create a tightly structured agenda where I filled every moment with activities and talk, I did what I often encourage teachers to do — I created spaces in the agenda for the learners to become co-creators of their own learning experience.

I started each day with a section called “Feedback on Feedback” where I took time to address any feedback I’d received about the workshop and make adjustments to the agenda based on the needs of the participants.  If something wasn’t working, we nixed it right there and tried something else instead. If participants didn’t feel that an activity would help them reach the objectives for the day, we came up with an alternative.

I also included time for teachers to share their own strategies. Sometimes I invited certain teachers to share, other times I announced that we would have time to share and let teachers volunteer. Each teacher had five minutes to share a strategy or resource that was relevant to the instructional principles we were discussing and take questions from the other participants. They could share a strategy they were already using successfully with their own students or one they had developed as a result of the workshop.  I learned as much as the other workshop participants during these sessions.  In fact, these sessions were amazing for how they fostered a learning community where we were all co-creators of the learning experience.

I also included time for teachers to work together in subject-alike groups to apply what they were learning and create resources they could use immediately with their students. This was a chance for participants to find practical applications for the theorhetical principles they were learning.

Finally, for each learning activity, I included a “rouge” option. Partipants had the choice of completing the activity I planned, or they could negotiate an alternative activity they would complete instead. As long as they could demonstrate how their choice would help them achieve the objectives of the workshop, they were free to pursue it. Some of the best insights of the day came from people who chose to “go rouge.”

It was a huge risk but it paid off. The participants told me that it was a much more rewarding workshop for them and I can see from the activity on our follow-up electronic community that the participants are using what they learned in their classrooms and sharing it with their colleagues. They have an enthusiasm for the project that wasn’t present before and I believe that these teachers now own what they have learned and are adapting — not adopting– these strategies into their own instructional practice.

Here’s what I learned. While I am a firm advocate of creating spaces in lesson for students to take ownership over their own learning, I have always been afraid to do the same for adults. I thought that if I did, I would seem unprepared. I felt like I needed to have highly structured activities or people would feel that my workshops were a waste of time. What I am learning is that when I let go of the false notions that I have to be the expert and allow room for co-creating, the learning experiences in my workshops can model the types of learning experiences I believe should be happening in the classroom.  I cannot forget that the same principles that work for helping children learn also work for helping adults learn. I plan to spend more time practicing what I preach.

And the quest continues…

~Robyn R. Jackson

As the holidays approach, many of us throw our typical eating habits out the window and start a week or two of reckless (and delicious) overload. For breakfast I had a bowl of fiber cereal and several of those sugary candy orange slices. That counts as a fruit, right?

Pretty soon I’ll surely come to my senses and make a New Years resolution to eat more healthfully. I know it’s good for me, but it is always hard to keep up my motivation to stick with it.

While you enjoy that second helping of pie this winter break, remember that even for grown ups it’s sometimes challenging to make a habit of doing what you know is good for you. As you begin a new semester with your students in January, try borrowing a few ideas for motivation from the healthy lifestyle New Years resolution to support the habits that lead to success in your classroom.

• Celebrate results. When students complete their work or study effectively for an assessment, try writing them a note, sending an email home, or catching them for a quick conversation to reinforce the connection between their hard work and their classroom success.

• Help students set incremental goals. If a student ended last quarter with a poor grade or many missing assignments, take a few minutes to work with the student to set a few achievable goals for improvement – perhaps moving up a letter grade, writing down the homework assignment each day, or coming in for extra help once a week. You can always set new goals once the student makes progress.

• Exercise with a friend. You might be tempted to skip your trip to the gym, but probably not if you know a friend is meeting you there. Help students find a homework or class work buddy – someone to check in with a couple of times a week to compare notes on how they’re managing their work. Peer accountability takes very little time on your part and helps form positive bonds for your students.

• Lead by example. As students move through the grades they are increasingly responsible for their own time management, but those skills are rarely taught in class. Share with students how you manage your own work – do you make a to-do list and check off each item? Come to work half an hour earlier to get a head start on busy days? Block out time first thing Saturday morning to work and then reward yourself with an activity you really enjoy?

• Use easy external motivators. A few years back I tried a weight loss program that I tracked on-line. Every time I lost 5 pounds, a little star popped up on my profile. I didn’t necessarily do the work of losing the weight just to get the star, but I honestly felt great whenever a new one appeared. No matter how old (or cool) your students are, they will still like recognition for their work. Consider using a star chart in class for students who complete their homework or come prepared, or write a note of recognition to give to a student who is making progress. As you clean up the holiday aftermath at your house, consider making a classroom prize box. I used to have one filled with things like discarded fast food kid’s meal toys, a free Frisbee I got at a concert, little lotions from hotels, a calendar from my bank, etc. When students turned in their homework they could put their name on a slip of paper in a bucket and every Friday I drew a name for a trip to the prize box. My eighth graders loved it, and my non-teacher friends and family started saving their desirable clutter to refill my prize box.

Have more motivational ideas of your own? I hope you’ll post them here!

– Claire Lambert

For most of us, only a few weeks remain in the marking period.  Secondary teachers probably have exams arriving in the next couple of weeks while elementary teachers may be feeling their time slipping away due to special holiday programs and end-of-unit assessments. Rather than “running out of time” during the last few days before winter break – or leaving so many things due the day before vacation that your time off is consumed by grading – take a few minutes to plot out your remaining December classes on a calendar and mark the due dates for your must-do assignments and assessments.

You might want to compare the school calendar to your personal calendar.  Guard your quality of life in this busy month by trying to schedule long stretches of grading or intensive preparation for times that you don’t have personal or family commitments.  If you’re wondering how you’ll pack everything in, consider some of the following ideas for condensing and consolidating the volume of work while still meeting your objectives for the unit.

• Review early: Who says the unit has to be over to begin reviewing for the test or exam? If you provide a review packet, consider breaking it into pieces. Go ahead and give students the review materials for the content you have already taught. This way they can begin studying early (and avoid last minute cramming) and you can get ahead of the end-of-semester crunch.

• Consolidate: Does your class usually read three separate stories to practice three distinct reading strategies? Look for a single story or article that will allow students to practice all three strategies. The time you save covering more material can be focused on working with the strategies in greater depth.

• Tier your homework: If students usually complete 20 problems for homework – and you spend your time during or after class grading them – consider creating tiered homework assignments. This strategy works best for practicing concrete skills like math or science computation, grammar assignments, foreign language verb conjugations, etc.  In the last 10 minutes of class give a very short (4-5 question) formative assessment that covers the content of tonight’s homework. For students who get everything right, give minimal practice and a challenge application or extension. These students clearly get it, so they can self-check with an answer key the next day. For students who miss a couple of problems, provide review and practice.  They can self-check homework with an answer key and help one another or identify a few problems as a group for which they would like teacher assistance. For students missing nearly all of the material, provide homework that focuses on building understanding of the concept and spend most of the time the next day you would normally spend on checking homework with the whole class providing reteaching to this group.

Have other ideas for getting the most bang for your instructional buck during the December crunch? Post them here!

–Claire Lambert

Whether students are missing classes in December due to illness or travel, you’re bound to have more than a few absences throughout the month. Consider creating an Absent Work Folder system either on a bulletin board or crate in your classroom. When you hand out new assignments or return papers, put a copy (with the student’s name) in the absent work folder for anyone who isn’t there. With older students, you could even have a classroom helper do this job. Then when a student returns, anything he or she missed is in one spot and can be found without help from you!

–Claire Lambert

In keeping with the Thanksgiving theme this week, take a moment to consider what you’re thankful for in your teaching career. I’m guessing for most of us it isn’t test prep, grading on the weekends or writing college recommendations that makes us thankful, but forming meaningful connections with students and seeing young people grow in our care.  This could be the perfect week to take a few minutes out for community building in your classroom. Sometimes community building activities are dismissed as too fluffy, off-topic or a waste of time, but consider that when students in a class feel connected to the teacher and to each other they may be more likely to help a neighbor, work effectively with a group, take academic risks and develop a positive self-concept.

Here are a few ideas of community builders that don’t require a lot of time or planning, are easy to adapt for your grade-level or student population, and  build a sense of interdependence in the classroom.

• Group Résumé – Have students work together in groups of 4 or 5 to create a poster-sized résumé of their combined skills, talents and experiences. For example, all together students may have strengths in math, science, basketball, scrapbooking and babysitting. They may have 6 brothers and 5 sisters, 3 dogs and 4 cats. They may speak 4 languages and have traveled to 6 different countries. Choose résumé categories that make sense for your age group and student population. Post the résumés or have students share out.

• Thank you notes – give each student – and the teacher — a few index cards or small squares of paper and have them write anonymous thank you notes to their classmates and teacher. Don’t include any names, only the things they’re thankful for. Read or post the cards so students can see “thanks for explaining the homework when I called you” “thanks for asking me to be in your group when I was alone” and “thanks for handing back papers while I helped a student.”

• Positive Attributes — Provide a word splash with 20 or more positive character traits. Have students choose two or three that best describe themselves. Then put them in small groups and ask other group members to choose a few words from the list to describe each of their team members. Students discuss to find overlap and hear from their team mates about what makes them special.

• Man on the Street Interviews – Pick up a toy microphone (or imagine your classroom stapler is a microphone) and let students interview each other about what they’re thankful for. Even better, build connections by having students talk with a partner in advance and then share for the group what their partner is thankful for. So you might get to hear

Reporter: This is Tiffany, she’s a first grader, and she is thankful for her big sister. Tiffany tell us more about that.

Tiffany: I’m thankful for my sister because she shares her markers and she saves a seat for me on the bus.

Reporter: Thanks for talking with us, Tiffany.

Have other ways to build community while giving thanks in your classroom? Post them here!

–Claire Lambert

Once in a workshop I heard a teacher describe a group of five or six kids in her elementary class as “the gorillas” – the crew that always raised their hands and emitted a low “oooh-oooh-oooh” until they were called on.  The gorillas can be wonderful when they keep the discussion moving and reassure us that the lesson is working, but there are probably other students in the class who rarely or never raise their hands who either know the answer or would benefit from working through it with the teacher.  Teachers often resist calling on students whose hands are not raised for fear of embarrassing them or putting them on the spot if they are unprepared or don’t have the right answer.

Next time your lesson calls for problem-solving, making inferences, or dealing with complexity, consider using the Numbered Heads Together strategy in order to increase the diversity of voices in your classroom (and perhaps give the gorillas some practice listening to their peers). Put students in small groups of three or four – students sitting close by are fine – and have them number off so that each student in every group has a number from 1-3 or 1-4. Students will know their own numbers, but the teacher won’t know who has each number.  Students work together to complete the short activity or practice from your lesson and each student makes sure she has captured and can explain the group’s responses. Then the teacher can randomly select a number – the 2s for instance – and whoever is member #2 in each group reports out on the answer or group’s process for finding a response.

The strategy allows students to engage with peers, practice their responses in a small group first, and talk to the whole class with the confidence of representing a group rather than being on their own.

Quick tips: if you are using groups of 4 but one group has only 3 students, have student #1 also be #4.  If one group has an extra student, let two students share a number and answer together if their number is called.  Feel free to switch up your number anytime – if the 2s in your first two groups have already thoroughly answered the first question, switch it up to the 4s to address the next item.

Claire Lambert

I’ve been reading and thinking a lot lately about formative assessment and have heard from teachers who embrace it and from those who are still struggling to find a place for it within their curriculum and teaching style.  As an adult, I’m noticing that “real-life” formative assessment is all around us. Whether you’re checking the treadmill display to see your calorie count half way through your work out, taking a friend shopping with you for a special occasion outfit, or tasting something on the stove before it’s done, you’re participating in formative assessment – essentially checking along the way to make sure you’re on the right track and allowing time to correct your course if you’re headed in the wrong direction.

We hear a great deal about what formative assessment does for teachers in terms of providing data to track student progress and inform instruction. But could there be more to it? Does formative assessment also teach a “soft skill” to our students about the importance of checking their own understanding before the due date rolls around?

Think back to your own days as a student. Did you ever walk out of a test thinking “I just bombed that!” or “I didn’t realize that would be on the test!” Remember that sinking feeling that your grade was going down the tubes or that you would have to do some creative explaining to your parents? How might life have been different if a week before the test your teacher had given a short practice quiz, an example written response, or a blank map for you to complete?

I often hear teachers who are grappling with formative assessment express concern that it breeds laziness in students or spoon-feeds them what will be on the test. But consider how those same short, low-stakes formative assessments – especially those that students can be involved in scoring and revising – could focus a student’s studying or give her a heads-up that she doesn’t know something as well as she thinks she does. Wouldn’t it be great for students to leave a test without that sinking feeling – and for you to grade the test without the sinking feeling of your own?

Please join in the blog discussion with examples of how you involve students in formative assessment, how you’re trying to make formative assessment work for your class, or the roadblocks standing in your way.

–Claire Lambert

I loved my high school drama class and really wanted to participate in the school play. Unfortunately most of the plays were musicals and, while my acting was pretty passable for a 9th grader, my singing is best confined to the shower and solo car trips. Nonetheless, I auditioned and was excited to get a part in the third tier chorus of the production of Annie. My group appeared in only a few songs and we were really more like mobile scenery than actual actors, but I had a terrific time rehearsing, hanging out back stage, and making new friends.

One afternoon during a choral rehearsal, I noticed a quote tacked on the bulletin board in the chorus room. It said, “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig” (Robert Heinlein). As I stood in the back row doing my best to avoid the chorus teacher’s attention, I realized without a doubt – I was the pig.

Luckily it wasn’t necessary that the teachers directing the play advance my singing. The show was full of talented singers and as long as I danced enthusiastically with my mop in the orphanage scenes and kept mouthing those words, everyone was happy. But what about our students whose progress does matter an awful lot, but who believe that they are pigs of our classrooms? They probably appear disengaged or distracted, and if you’ve ever wondered if you’re wasting your time with them, chances are they’ve considered the same thing.

Take a moment to think of one or two of these students whom you see each day. How could you engage them in the learning that takes place in your classroom? Encourage them to participate? Unlock some of the secrets of how to make progress in your class or show them that their success is important to you? Try to think of one small thing you can do this week to try to teach that pig to sing – I hope you’ll share your ideas and progress on the blog!

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Catch the student looking good – reinforce a productive learning behavior like being prepared, following directions, asking for help, completing work, etc.
• Encourage transparency – explicitly clarify something the student does to increase the likelihood of success – “When you completed the organizer with your group, you were able to answer the question on the test” or “When you asked for clarification about the directions, you were able to do the activity right the first time.”
• Pre-alert for participation – as students work independently or in groups, listen in and find something the student has done right. Let him know you will call on him. – “You answered number three correctly, I’m going to call on you to explain to the class how you figured it out.”

Claire Lambert