Failure Must Be an Option

If there is one thing that has been the theme of my school year thus far it is "Failure Must Be an Option" for my students and me. Let me explain.

If your students cannot fail then they are not being challenged. The key of course is trying to scaffold the situations so they don't fail. As Hartl for Expeditionary Learning as been oft quoted this fall, students who do this kind of work are forever changed.  The heart of differentiation is changing the scaffolding so that all students can be successful while realizing that failure awaits them should they quit.

But what about teachers? Are you challenging yourself in your classes such that you face failure? Are you pushing the envelope in such a way that you are growing in some fashion?

Administrators, do you foster a climate where teachers can try new things in an effort to promote innovation in your school(s)?  I can say with conviction (and the knowledge that my administration doesn't read my blog) that allowing our staff to innovate is one of my principal's greatest strengths, and one he actively lives. Do all of our initiatives work out perfectly? No, some are undeniably failures but we learn from them and try to constantly improve our practice and school.

Too often we try to get our learners to take chances and risk failure without being willing to do so ourselves. My challenge to you is to go out on a limb and see what you can innovate if you don't take failure off the table.

Comment with how you're going to let failure be an option in the new year. 

One Thing Educators Can Learn from Scientists

I can't tell you how many times I've been in a situation where a current product or philosophy in education has been castigated and an evolution of it has been proposed to replace it.  There is a lot of commotion currently about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with demonstrates this tension well, but there are others that play out on stages much small (including my own building).  Scientific history isn't without its faults, but in the end it does one thing very well - acknowledge the contributions of those who have come before.

Isaac Newton is credited with saying "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."  Newton didn't disparage Aristotle or Galileo for their flawed versions of relativity, as Einstein didn't for Newton's flawed versions of relativity or gravity, instead they acknowledged that by contributing to the collective knowledge they have enable those that would come after to achieve even more.  This is not the prevailing practice in education today.

What I see in education instead is that were are sitting at product or policy M and some people that want to move to N don't do so by looking at M and recognizing that M represents previous attempts at making things better, but by only focus on M's shortcomings.  In 10 years there will probably be something in the place of CCSS that will be just as controversial.  Especially since the argument over CCSS is a red herring for what is wrong with education today - namely it's commercialization.  Do we really think that there exists a "perfect" set of standards and that if we just find it education in this country will be fine?  Foolishness.  Public education today is more the the United States Postal Service - stuck in a place with so many competing mandates that it is impossible to fulfill them all and therefore always subject to condemnation along one facet or another.

What if we instead took the approach that progress is what is truly important and that what has come before were people's best attempts to improve the condition in what that decision was made? Just as evolution keeps successful organisms around to breed and grow more complex to fill environmental niches, educational evolution should drive policy and philosophy toward more successful solutions at the small scale.  If I could push the analogy further, there have been times when nature has gotten a jolt to drive evolution in ways that are meaningful at the time (after all, would there be humans without the extinction of the dinosaurs?), therefore the larger system will need jolts from time to time from research or government to make sure progress is being made in ways that are palatable and just.

So change will come, things we "know" now about teaching and learning will be shown to be wrong.  Just remember that many of the people coming before who had those thoughts were really trying hard and without them we probably wouldn't be where we are today.

The Primacy of Self-Discovery

As a teacher in an Expeditionary Learning school the Design Principles (DPs) are a important part of what I do.  Since I've also set the goal of doing at least one article review a month and there are 10 months, it seemed like a good fit to do an article review relating to each of the DPs over the course of the year.  This is the first.

The first DPs is "The Primacy of Self-Discovery" which states:

The Primacy of Self-Discovery states that learning happens best with emotion, challenge and the requisite support. People discover their abilities, values, passions, and responsibilities in situations that offer adventure and the unexpected. The primary task of the teacher is to help students overcome their fears and discover they can do more than they thought they could. source

The article that I choose is Alfie Kohn's "Five Reasons to Stop Saying 'Good Job!'".

In the last week my daughter taught herself how to ride her bike.  I tried to teach her the traditional way, running behind her holder her seat then gradually letting go, but it didn't work for either of us.  I set down two rules that we guided by my understanding of physics and she wouldn't follow them (1. Don't stop pedaling and 2. Faster is better).  So, I stepped away and couldn't have been happier.

You see, she wanted to learn how to ride her bike.  So did I, but after my frustrating interactions I realized that she was going to have to do it herself.  I noticed myself saying "good job" and "I'm so proud of you" quite a bit.  After reading this article, I've checked myself.  Now I say things like "how did that feel?" and debrief with her about her experience.

So our first big bike ride to the park came and she did great.  When we got there she climbed higher than she ever had on the rope structure; all the way to the top!  While she was on the top I applied my new Kohn techniques to debrief with her about how she overcame her fear and did something she always wanted to do.  I cemented this idea in her head so that next time she would encounter something insurmountable she would remember the other insurmountable challenges she had already conquered.

So, how do you see these ideas being an important part of your classroom?  I know that I will notice when I say empty statements like "Good Job" and try to change my own practice.  How about you?  Comment below!

Beginning of the Year Goal Setting Conferences

As I get back into "professional mode" and start thinking about the new school year I realize I need to set some goals for myself.  My school has goal setting conferences for all the students and I think that staff should do the same.  So, what are my goals for the year?

A personal goal is to try and make sure that I stay calm in more of my interactions.  I would love to say all, but that is not possible.  I struggle with staff negativity.  I struggle with student anumeracy (like aliteracy but for math), apathy, and my inability to get concepts across to students to are trying to learn (that last especially).  And I struggle with my family, for many of the reasons that many of us do!

A professional goal is to work on rebuilding my math department.  Aside from myself, there are no math teachers returning form the start of last year.  I've seen more than 1 new math teacher a year since starting 12 years ago and I would like to stop that!  I've got some promising colleagues, so it is a challenge I look forward to.  However, as an Expeditionary Learning school our math department is lagging behind our other departments in implementation.  Somewhat understandable with the turn-over and the difficulty of building meaningful case studies in mathematics.

I have two academic goals.  First, is that I would like to work hard on my National Board Certification.  I believe it is a three year process as they are redoing this process.  Time is good since it involves A LOT of writing; not a strength of mine.  My second is that I would like to post at least 2 blog posts a month, at least one of which will be an article review (I've done a few in the past if you look "down").

If you're a follower of this blog, on twitter (@TheMathProphet), or linked via LinkedIn with me you can hold me accountable.  What are your plans?  Post below!

My Graduation Speech

Below is the text of the commencement speech I'm going to give tonight.  A little over 8 minutes.  Thoughts are welcome!

Welcome graduates, parents, community members, and other esteemed guests.  I’d like to thank you for attending our graduation tonight; an event I hope you agree is different than most graduations, in a good way.

Most graduation speeches are filled with advice to the graduates about a wide variety of things, from taking risks to wearing sunscreen.  There are a few graduation speeches that are policy speeches like the one President Barack Obama gave to West Point last week, and this speech will be one of those.

Human culture is filled with rites of passages.  From graduation to bar mitzvahs, quinceaneras to Lion hunting, passages from childhood to adulthood are common throughout the world.  Today’s event marks an academic passage from one location of learning to another and by no means is an event marking a coming of age.  In fact, I believe that there is no such single event that marks that passage but instead it is the slow development of character over time that takes a person from an adolescent to an adult.

It is the development of character over time that I wish to take a few minutes and expound upon today.  Character education is the process of intentionally creating opportunities to talk about and reflect upon outcomes from moral or ethical situations.  The primary way that we create these opportunities is through a class we have called Crew.  Crew is a class like other schools have called advisory or homeroom, but instead of a class whose primary purpose is announcements or administrative tasks, we take the time intentionally build a school culture where people build empathy and discuss our lives to grow together.  In Crew we’ve talked about racism, our weekends, sexism, “no means no”, we’ve taken care of fake babies, reading to them and bathing them, played kickball, created baskets for PTO fund raisers, planned dances, studied inspiring lives like Nelson Mandela, done Anti-bullying lessons, learned about time management, fed starving children, and the list goes on.

The term Crew is an Expeditionary Learning term that comes from being on a ship together.  The father of Expeditionary Learning, Kurt Hahn, believed very strongly in the role that challenges could play in building culture, character, and leadership and often times his challenges took the form of sailing on the open ocean.  He is credited with the quotation “nobody is allowed to be a passenger, everyone belongs to the ship’s crew” which places on the students a burden of being involved in the development of themselves and each other.  It also places upon all of us the onus of assisting in the development of their character, not allowing any of us to be passengers in the lives of those in front of us or around us.

Think about the consequences of this for a moment.  Everyone here is a part of these graduates’ lives in some way or another, making you Crew on their ship.  Until now, they have all been Crew on the same ship.  By transitivity we have been bound together to help each other develop a positive school culture and the character of these graduates.  How you have done that, only you know.  The degree to which you have been an asset to OWL only you know and only you are going to judge. 

Another way we at OWL work to build character is by taking the time to discuss issues that arise in our classes that some feel may take away from academic learning time.  At OWL we use words like Integrity, Perseverance, Responsibility, Collaboration and Stewardship but others use words like Grit, Optimism, Compassion, Respect, and so on.  By intentionally building these into our curriculum, and even putting a grade to them, we are saying that we value these character traits and their development are just as important as academic development.  And I want to emphasize that when I say development I mean that these are things that people can, and do, get better at.  Just as students get better at mathematics in my classroom as the result of time, effort, and reflection, students can get better at stewardship by not littering, telling their friends to not litter, and by taking time to give back of their talents or treasures to the community.  People can, and do, get better all the time.

That brings us back to my original point about passage from adolescence into adulthood.  A moment ago I mentioned responsibility, and one of the primary ways that people are judged as adults is how they manage their responsibilities.  Those responsibilities are many and include things like voting, taking care of dependants, following through on commitments, et cetera.  Many of the graduates on this stage have been, by this definition, adults for a while.  Some of the graduates on this stage will not be adults for some time yet to come.  How they develop from this moment forward is in part the responsibility of those of us here to support them as members as their Crews.

My challenge to the graduates on stage is to think about what role you would OWL to serve for you moving forward.  I see three potential possibilities.  The first is that you see yourself well on your way as a balanced individual and adult and want to give back to OWL in ways that are specific to your abilities.  The second is where you still need help from us and we are here to assist you in any way that we can.  Admitting to this second by the way is not an admission of weakness, but of strength.  It is a statement that you are nearly there and just need a little bit more and we are here to help.  The third is that you are ready to leave us and never look back.  As teachers I can tell you that while sometimes sad, this is okay too.  You see, teachers don’t make widgets, we help make people.  As you leave us each of us is force to reflect on the type of people we have helped you become and hopefully that reflection enables us to help create even better people to follow.

So celebrate today, understand this event in its context, continue to grow as a person we can all be proud of so that if you were to have a bumper sticker or a shirt in the community we could see you acting like a person we are happy to have advertising for us.

Legacy as an Educator

As I prepare to deliver a commencement speech for my school, Open World Learning Community (OWL) on the transition from young person to adult (and the role character and culture education play), I have been spending a lot of time thinking about legacy.  I'll post the contents of my speech after I give it, but the basic idea is that whether you can be consider an adult or not can be determined by how you handle your responsibilities (replace adult with professional and you can gauge yourself as a professional against the same standard).  However, I don't see becoming an effect adult the final goal, but instead what I'll call a matriarch or patriarch.  To be considered an effective matriarch or patriarch, or the professional equivalent, you will be weighed by the legacy you leave.

I imagine that many of my readers are are not end of profession educators.  Therefore, the question you need to ask yourself first is "Am I fulfilling my professional responsibilities?"  If not, start there.  Don't worry about your legacy yet!  However, if your a mid-career professional and are taking care of your professional responsibilities then you can start thinking about the legacy you are leaving behind.

There are several ways to think about your legacy.  Most teachers probably think about their legacy in terms of the sum impact on their students.  That is a legitimate way to calculate a legacy, but I believe an incomplete one.  What kind of policy changes have your fought to implement or remove that helped students learn in your building, district, state, etc?  What have you done to help others in the profession that are coming after you to be successful and start a legacy of their own?  What have you don in the community to influence people's perceptions of your profession?  Tell me, what are you doing to build your legacy?

I have been lucky enough to work with some amazing educators in my short 12 years of teaching.  Several of them have left a legacy which I believe will stand the test of time.  I have seen gifted educators also leave and be nearly forgotten, except by a select few who remember vividly their contributions and lament their retirement (but never begrudge them).  And I have seen educators behave in such ways at the end of their careers that it almost gets to the point that there are those that don't want to work with them; that think they maybe held on too long.

If you are an end of career educator, I'd like to hear about how you're cementing your legacy as you prepare to transition.  Are you sticking to your principles as you move on or have you abandoned them?

Donald Sterling in Crew?

My school spends a lot of time on social and character education.  There have been many crises over the years that have come and gone that I have not talked about and somewhat regret.  The most famous was the shooting of Trayvon Martin which I just didn't know about.  We did discuss the Sandy Hook elementary shooting and the idea of teachers carrying guns in school (which I am against).

So, how should the most recent racist comments allegedly from Donald Sterling be talked about?  I know there are many of my students, especially my African American males, will want to talk about this topic.  In addition, there are the abusive relationship aspects of this recorded conversation that is worthy of conversation as well.

The question I pose is: What do other teachers do with crises like these?