What's Working In Schools

Recently I mentioned the debate about the relevance of technology in schools, but there is a motivational merit to using technology if we’re trying to engage kids towards content for which they may not otherwise have desire or access.  One of my favorite thinkers, Marshal McLuhan, is famous for his phrase: “The medium is the message.”  In short, how we teach is as important as what we teach and the closer those two become the more solid the instruction and learning is prone to be.

Kim Fitzer, a doctoral researcher at Michigan State University, has been studying the practice of teaching creatively with technology.  She has found connections between teacher comfort level, technical knowledge, belief systems and institutional supports that promote technology use, or not.  Here’s what Kim recently shared with me:

“We’ve been asking the question for years … is it the medium (meaning the technology), or the message, that promotes student learning?  But now, we are beginning to wonder if the medium itself actually changes the message in ways that profoundly impact the methods by which people learn.  So, we can view a text, click on a link that takes us to a new text, watch an animation and interact with the images, view a video, and listen to an MP3 file that explains the concepts further, all of which are stimulating parts of the brain that would not have been activated previously by just the message itself.  The “new literacies” are pushing the boundaries of what we know of learning, and may be producing a more nimble mind.  Certainly our students are learning this way at home … shouldn’t teachers be harnessing this practice at school?”

Still, there remains anxiety in the teaching world about using technology, while the mismatch is that kids and their families are living in a world that is plugged in.  For that, this year I have decided to turn some of my core lesson objectives into classrooms of technology themselves, to learn as we go and to enhance my students’ and peers’ learning through “mediums that become the message”.  To teach the comprehension strategies of synthesizing and thinking aloud in reading, we will blog to one another.  To facilitate the ever-challenging schedules of my cross-district professional learning community, we will meet online to share our thoughts in a wiki.  To get myself comfortable with technology that I may further use in the classroom, I will find one hour each month to explore one site, tool, or application, then throw my learning to my students or peers to see how, or even if, it will improve our collective understanding.

Learning soars when technology is the classroom, not just part of the lesson.  Here are some ideas to begin exploring technology that might benefit students or your professional team:

• Use a blog with students (Kidblog.org is a great, free resource.)
• Start a wiki with colleagues (Wikispaces.org has free access for educators.)
• Try an online bulletin board for idea sharing (Spaaze.com is really cool!)
• Build digital posters (Glogster.com may save wall space.)

My daughter recently asked me, “Do Smartboards make students smarter?” I was taken aback by the random nature of this question from this asker, but saw she was holding in her hand an article from the NEA Today magazine, written by Rosita Force, a technology teacher from Omaha. I hadn’t read the article yet, but my response echoed Ms. Force in that technology these days has become so insanely helpful it confuses and scares many teachers. To that end, I answered that it is not simply using the technology, but how a teacher uses technology that helps students grow. Teachers who advocate technology use have our favorites, but I often have to step back and ask myself, is this application or tool really helping grow the child and his or her thinking, or is it just a neat way to do the same thing? Is the technology making my teaching easier or their learning better?  Could I teach a concept just as effectively (or efficiently) without teaching a new application or tool, simply because it’s there or because my students will more readily engage?

For the learning itself, we need to be extremely critical thinkers, as models and practitioners, so that when we push learners to think outside of the box, we’re not just pushing them into a different, digital box.

Long before I started teaching, someone coined the term “whole child”, regarding all the aspects of our students’ learning and well-being.  This term always brings to me the recollection of my first year in the classroom.  When those children entered, I soon learned that one was diabetic and required blood checks every two hours, another had a violent psychological history, one was (according to the veteran staff) “off the charts” with hyperactivity, two were extremely unmotivated to the point of depression, a family was going through divorce, another mother was recently diagnosed with cancer, CAP left a boy’s reading level three years behind, while two more were also receiving help from the resource room for various deficits.  As I recall these variables of my first year, I am surprised I made it emotionally, socially, or academically, and I wonder if I effectively taught anyone anything!  However, each year as I reflect on that first class, I compare and realize that the demographics remain as diverse and challenging, but I have improved at embracing each and every whole child, focused on helping them become a brighter, better person.  New teachers…it will come.

My name is Walt Sutterlin and I am the new host for the “What’s Working in Schools Blog”.  I’ve been a reader since this blog launched and always find great discussion and insights from other readers here, not to mention spectacular observations offered by the previous blogger, Dr. Mark Stock.  It is the collaborative knowledge from the classroom, to the boardroom, to the kitchen table, to academia that will improve schools.  Let’s face it, if we’re not engaging the “whole” person in our relationships, we’re not giving our best or helping others become their best.  The job of education, and this blog, focuses on these virtues that we as educators are committed to building in students: social, emotional, and academic growth. If you are a regular reader, or plan on becoming one, please respond to this post so we can meet one another and let the great thinking continue!

The above title was used by my mentor, Quality guru W. Edwards Deming, to describe the looming economic meltdown of the 1980s and the processes by which he led Japan out of its crisis.   We are now in the midst of living through an even greater crisis but one that also affords unprecedented opportunity.

The opportunity I refer to—and that I am writing to ask you to be part of— is the solution for assuring sustainable success of our children; and for creating environments where failure is not an option for any of them.

Current Challenges

The crisis part of the equation is easy to spot. Look at the world economic meltdown, the BP oil spill, and one of the greatest periods of religious and ethnic strife in recent history.

The resulting disruption, rancor and conflict show up everywhere—including education and the politics that surround it. All this and more beckons us to make a greater commitment to securing the future of our children. It calls for courageous action and leadership at all levels.

At the same time, we are experiencing one of the most intensive periods of educational change in at least a generation, and we have, as a result, the rare opportunity of shaping generations to come. Again, our emphasis must be on bold action and leadership.

Current Opportunities

We have learned since our founding 20 years ago that leadership, in fact, is the most powerful link to effective teachers, exemplary schools and extraordinary outcomes. The outcomes of collective and courageous leadership can be seen for example, in Finland; in Tower Hamlets in the UK (see Hargreaves and Fink, Failure Is Not an Option®, 2010); throughout Ontario Canada and in the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Likewise, the HOPE Foundation is deeply engaged in creating game-changing links—building entire leadership teams within a school, district, or region; a team able to transform “crisis” into extraordinary outcomes.

While districts throughout the United States erupted into places of conflict between teachers and administrators, one district which HOPE engaged with banked on the leadership, trust and collaborative processes to help turn a $15 million budget shortfall into a new and powerful vision moving forward—one that led to 96% of their teachers approving their new contract for the year!

Examples like this (and a decade-long track record for helping low-performing schools succeed and entire districts close gaps within and across schools through sustained leadership development) have led both the National Education Association and the American Association of School Administrators to support the HOPE Foundation’s Failure Is Not an Option® model.

There are now billions of dollars in the U.S. alone being poured into various “best practices,” much of which (3.9 billion) is directed at improving the lives of children who are drowning emotionally and intellectually in low-performing schools. These efforts are laudable.

They also need informed guidance from leaders who have been down many blind alleys and now see the light of what both research and practice have taught us the past two decades.

Those lessons include:

• Leadership is the Necessary Lever for spreading effective teaching practice in a school, district, province, and beyond.
• Culture is Queen (and King), and is at the core of sustainable change and student success. Policies, structures, accountability and the like will only serve to support whatever culture is in place which may include supporting a negative culture, in which new policies and their shortcomings become the focus of staff meetings.
• Trust Trumps Technique and is the underpinning of a high-performing school culture.  If adults are learning, so are the students; if adults get along, the students will.  Trust is at the core of it all (see Bryke and Sneider, 2002).
• The Team is the Unit of Change—not the individual. Both the culture and leadership will be enhanced if leadership development occurs simultaneously at all levels.

For more on what we have learned in implementing sustainable large-scale leadership development, I encourage you to see “Lessons Learned” from Failure Is Not an Option® Second Edition 2010, or visit our website.

A Call to Action

This is a time for truly “courageous” leadership, following the strictest of definitions. The word comes from the French word “le Coeur”, or “the heart”, and was understood by everyone—from Aristotle to Winston Churchill to Martin Luther King—to be the pillar of all other virtues. Many Native Americans, notably the Lakota Sioux, understood courage to be sacrificing for the greater good, and they taught their children how to give up their most valued possessions as part of their development toward being young “Braves.”

Now is the time for us to individually and collectively reclaim this virtue, and put it to use in what we know will have profound and lasting outcomes for our children and youth:

• Join a network of Courageous Leaders who have committed to, learned from and acted on creating a fail-safe environment for students. In a few months, we will launch with Sinet/PD360 and Corwin Press our Courageous Leaders Network for practitioners and leaders at all levels. Consider this post your complimentary invitation to join that launch. To join the launch, please contact us at 800.627.0232 ext. 210 or email us at leadership@hopefoundation.org

• Contribute your success stories to our database of information. Doing this will help inform the field and advance our collective success. You can do this by contacting us at the previous number or email.

• Weigh-in on our next Shaping America’s Future forum, which is now in development. Prior forums have influenced policy and makers of that policy from education, government and business (see our Website for background). This fall we will collectively weigh in on the new ESEA, which will shape American education for the foreseeable future.

• Let us know how we can help! We have worked successfully in schools in throughout the world. What can we do to help you advance your success with your students in ways that will be sustained?

To paraphrase Einstein, the leadership that has brought us these crises may not be thinking at the level necessary to rectify the situation. It is hard to imagine, for example, how BP executives alone would bail us out of the dark, putrid oil they have immersed us in. It is time for all of us to collectively contribute to courageous new actions.

I, and the HOPE Foundation, look forward to helping that emerge, and to working with you to that end.

Sincerely,

Alan M. Blankstein
President of the HOPE Foundation and Author of Failure Is Not an Option®: 6 Principles for Making Student Success the ONLY Option

This will be my last official post on the What’s Working in Schools Blog – at least as the Chief Blogger anyway.  I have enjoyed the time here – but like most things in life -changes come and go.

I start my official duties as Superintendent of Schools in Cheyenne, WY this week.  But since I have been working in the district off and on for a month or so – blogging has been sparse.

I want to thank the HOPE Foundation for allowing me this opportunity.  I am sure there are changes coming as HOPE ponders the use of this medium and how it fits into their overall mission and purpose. 

I strongly believe in providing a voice for educators and this is one medium for doing so.

I want to thank Alan Blankstein for his vision and passion for schools and students and I want to thank Maria Douglas for her support of the blog. 

I will continue to follow you.  Good luck!!

Guest Post by teacher Walt Sutterlin.

There’s a boy in my class whom, just a few months ago, I found even myself saying to colleagues that he had “pretty much burned his bridges with friends at this school”.  He has reasons for unconventional, obnoxious behaviors, but elementary children don’t get that…they just get the obnoxious part.  I put my hope into him beginning a 5^th grade year with new friends and a fresh start at a new school.

However, in the past three weeks, he and I have been setting small goals and celebrating when he met them.  Other kids started to notice.  One day this week, when he was out of the room, the class awarded his table the “Unicorn” trophy for model behavior.  His female nemesis announced that she’d noticed him being really nice.  Another kid went on to say, “…he’s pretty cool when he tries not to be annoying.”  Agreement and nodding heads spread around the room like a rolling wave. I invited them to share those thoughts with him personally when he came back to the room.  When they did, I swear I witnessed something inside this child shift.

Hope is the ability to change.  Hope is rebuilding burnt bridges.  Hope is respecting the good even when you see it in your enemies. Through kids, I am given hope.   What hope have you experienced in yourself or students each day?  How do you watch for it?

As of July 1, I will officially be the new Superintendent of Schools for Cheyenne, Wyoming – Wyoming’s largest school district.  While not large by many state’s standards, it is still a big responsibility in America’s least populated state.

There are 2,500 employees and 33 schools in the district. 

 I am very excited about returning to K-12 education.  While I enjoyed much of higher education I found it to be too far removed from the teachers and students who are the main players in the educational arena.

Unfortunately I will not be able to continue as the chief blogger for the HOPE Foundation after June 30, 2010.

We are working now on a blogging replacement!! We will let you know who will take our site to the next level!

There are so many things to learn from our most recent crisis, and the most profound lessons cross all disciplines including education:

1. Blame doesn’t cure the problem – in the short-term it exacerbates it. I am livid with BP Executives and what they have done to the environment; our economy; and the lives of so many people. Yet focusing on that in the midst of the crisis is at best a distraction, and at worst an inhibitor of good ideas. Like the nervous child in front of the classroom, BP executives are not likely to be their most creative, bold, or solution-oriented while facing criminal investigations in congress; they will instead hunker down and play it safe. It’s late for playing it safe in this situation – now is the time for the best thinking to come forth. All the brain research and emotional intelligence data show  that this does not occur in a state of panic or fear. James Comer’s famous network of schools that were oasis of hope for children in impoverished neighborhoods had three major axiom’s – the first of which was “no blame.” There will be plenty of time for judgments later. Anger and political point-scoring should yield to constructive problem solving now.
2. The answer is in the room – networks work. The second edition of Failure Is Not an Option draws heavily from our “Beacons of HOPE” – districts that have developed with us a framework for problem-solving that includes ALL the leaders in the district. The point is that the answer usually lies within. The challenge is creating the culture and framework for sharing those answers, and developing new ones for which there is no script. BP should not be alone in this problem solving endeavor . To paraphrase Einstein: the thinking that got them into this situation may not be sufficient for getting them out of it. Japan’s meteoric rise in the 80s was attributed to many things, including a collaborative culture that allowed even competitors to do

R & D together under a government consortium called MITI. Isn’t it time we form such a brain bank from across disciplines to work together to solve this situation? Doesn’t everyone – even those would be BP competitors – have a stake in this?

1. The interconnections of the systems being affected lead both to crisis and opportunity. Let’s assume for a moment that the impact of this crisis showed us once again that the interconnectedness of the world, of nature, of our economies, and of human kind were more powerful than what separates us (like borders, language and ethnicity). What if we expedited and deepened our learning so that we began with the knowledge that if fish die in the Gulf, then birds would be impacted when they tried to eat them, and that if birds and fish were dying, this would impact the insect population which would in turn lead to a new level of deterioration of trees (and a whole lot of extra mosquitoes for people!). And let’s say we began with the understanding that our atmosphere knows no borders so that if trees die in one part of the world, another part of the world would need to produce more oxygen to compensate for this. And what if we understood that displacement of tens of thousands of people in the fishing industry in the Gulf led to increased prices that impacted economies worldwide. In other words, what if we understood that – as with the last banking crisis – all these systems are interconnected, and we are all inextricably bound to one another? Would that also lead to a whole new set of solutions? Might the fishing industry in New Orleans be “exported” to share their wisdom with people in another part of the world? Might BP “plant a tree” so to speak, or create a robust eco-environment somewhere else to compensate for the now unavoidable losses in the gulf? If we began with the premise of interconnectivity v. separation, we would have a whole new set of possible solutions.

The potential lessons of this crisis are vast.  The big question is will we learn them quickly enough to begin addressing this situation with new assumptions that lead us to new constructs for finding innovative and transformative solutions. We face a problem unlike any that came before it. The old approach has gotten us deeper into the proverbial hole. A new starting point is needed.

Who are the leaders in your school?  Back in the “old days” the leaders were either members of the Board of School Trustees or the principal or superintendent.

While these positions get most of the attention when people talk about leadership, the modern reality is that effective leadership is shared and distributed among people in the organization.

It would seem only natural when the spotlight is turned on teaching and learning that leadership would need to come from many different people.  No one educational leader will be an expert in these areas.

I thought you might enjoy this blog post I found that popped up on my Google Alert today. 

5 Traits of the 21st Century Educational Leader written by teacher Mr. Keenan.

Several states are now taking on teacher tenure laws and seeking to change them.  I personally don’t think the laws themselves are the big problem.  While you might not agree with tenure – the reality is the problem isn’t the law as much as it is the failure of school leadership to confront some of the problems. 

Dangerously Irrelevant has a great blog post on this topic.  Scott outlines several of the common myths and perceptions about teacher tenure laws.

Check it out here.