Group items tagged

Be sensitive to how diverse cultures deal with conflict. Many citizens of Asian countries avoid open conflict, believing that differences are best worked out quietly. Written exchanges might be preferred over face-to-face conflict resolution.

Clarify expectations. If you put students into groups, for example, explain and model the difference between “helping” and “doing the work for” a partner.

Emphasize a positive environment, not punishment.

Increasing punishment fails to change student behaviors.

earned students’ consent and trust through humor.

The percent of teachers given the top rating ranged from 73 percent in Tennessee to 8 percent in Massachusetts and 3 percent in Georgia.

Many districts are drawing important distinctions between good and excellent teaching, but there is less differentiation among good, fair, and poor performance.

Why do so few teachers receive below-proficient ratings, despite the fact that school administrators estimate that more than a quarter of their teachers aren’t up to par?

The daunting workload involved in giving low ratings

Being merciful – Some principals said they were hesitant to give low ratings to rookie teachers out of kindness and a desire not to discourage (or lose) a teacher who had potential for growth.

Personal discomfort

Principals knew that teachers could lose their jobs as a result of a low rating, and were upset when teachers cried.

Her policy: use e-mail for non-urgent questions and texts when time is an issue.

2013 Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study, which asserted that it’s possible to accurately evaluate teachers by triangulating data from student surveys, value-added scores, and classroom observations.

Google, General Electric, and other corporations shifted from rating and ranking employees to providing real-time supervisor and peer feedback and coaching aimed at fostering professional growth to meet stretch goals. This rethinking was inspired by three findings from educational research: -   Performance ratings tend to foster a “fixed” versus a “growth” mindset. -   Numerical grades or ratings lead recipients to ignore detailed feedback. -   Extrinsic rewards can discourage the behaviors they aim to improve.

A 2012 initiative in Cincinnati suggests a different approach. Mid-career teachers who were observed four times by peers and given detailed feedback showed marked improvements in performance and student results. The key elements were frequency, credible observers, formative feedback, and a simple, low-stakes process with no direct ties to promotion and retention decisions.

Studies point to the following levers for continuous improvement:             • Peer collaboration – Veteran teachers continue to improve their skills if structures are in place that get them working with colleagues in focused, results-oriented instructional teams.             • Teacher evaluation – The key is detailed, valid feedback on classroom practices and support for improvement from knowledgeable and well-trained administrators or peers.             • Tailored on-the-job training – Most PD is ineffective, but intensive coaching focused on the specific needs of individual teachers and sustained over time can make a positive difference.             • Organizational supports – These include an orderly, disciplined school environment, services available to address students’ social and emotional needs, and positive parent engagement. • Leadership – “Hiring principals who have the talent to identify organizational weaknesses, establish schoolwide systems to support teachers and students, and galvanize collective buy-in from teachers is a central lever for improving the teaching and learning environment,” conclude Papay and Kraft.

Not having access to books in June, July, and August results in a two-month loss each summer for poor children compared to a one-month gain for more-advantaged children, and that accumulates over the years into a crushing achievement gap. Getting low-SES children reading over the summer is the most effective way to change that dynamic, but what works?

a home library is as important as parental education and twice as important as the father’s occupation in predicting educational outcomes;

Establish virtual office hours. Tucker tells students at the beginning of the year the dates and times when she’ll be available for a Google chat or Google Hangouts screen-sharing session. She has colleagues who tell students they can e-mail between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. and any e-mails received after that will be answered the next day.

Limit communication channels.

Other reasons – These included racial concerns (for example, if a disproportionate number of minority teachers might receive low ratings); burdensome dismissal procedures; principals making deals in which teachers agreed to leave the school in exchange for a higher rating; and concern about ineffective replacement teachers.

Make information available online.

Set up a space where students can connect online. Tucker has a private Google+ community where students can share information, ask questions, and support one another.

Protect unplugged time at home.

Not every disagreement is a call to arms.

How and when I use my voice matters. “As I see it,” says Gannon, “my job requires that I advocate for both faculty members and students, and for both teaching and learning. Sometimes that means speaking truth to power; other times it means speaking truth to colleagues.” This is especially important with issues of gender, race, and bullying.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

“It’s all too easy to let the minutiae detract from the larger goal… I’m not useful to anyone I serve if I’m overcommitted.”

Support, affirmation, and collegiality are more important. For me, leadership has become a matter of knowing and respecting my colleagues all over the campus, appreciating the work they do, and letting them know it… There’s no daily quota on thank you’s.”

At their best, they promote academic achievement, stronger student connections to education, and improved initiative, teamwork, and social skills.

Has a well-thought-out coaching philosophy aligned with the school’s educational, athletic, and programmatic goals – Winning isn’t the main goal, says Gould. Rather, “coaches work hard to help student-athletes learn important life lessons from their sport experiences.”

Shares decision-making with students and provides rationales for coaching actions

effective coaches meet their athletes’ need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in an atmosphere where students feel they belong.

Builds strong coach-athlete relationships in a caring, supportive climate – Each athlete is known as an individual, made to feel welcome, and knows that bullying and belittling others isn’t tolerated on or off the field.

Is a knowledgeable and effective teacher – “Research reveals that coaches who give positive versus degrading and punitive feedback or no feedback at all have athletes who are more motivated, feel better about themselves, and achieve more positive developmental outcomes from sports participation,” says Gould.

Is intentional in fostering positive youth development – This includes attention to leadership, teamwork, and a work ethic.

What these parents didn’t understand, says Jones, is that “You are either consistent, or you are inconsistent. There is nothing in between.”

“The irony of consistency,” says Jones, “is that the closer you come to being consistent before you fail, the worse off you are. If the parent cracks easily, the child does not need to be a world-class yammerer in order to succeed. But, if the parent does not crack easily, the child must learn to play hardball.”

How does this apply to classrooms? Teachers must set clear, reasonable expectations, says Jones, and then be absolutely consistent in enforcing them.

Never make a rule that you are not willing to enforce every time.

If you are consistent, you can use smaller and smaller consequences to govern misbehavior. But if you are inconsistent, you must use larger and larger consequences to govern misbehavior.

“it’s extremely unlikely you can greatly improve your reading speed without missing out on a lot of meaning…

“If you want to improve your reading speed, your best bet – as old-fashioned as it sounds – is to read a wide variety of written material and expand your vocabulary.”

you can’t take in words you don’t see, and you have a set-point for processing language that can be changed only by long-term improvements in vocabulary and knowledge.

when it comes to reading for deep comprehension or enjoyment, there are no shortcuts.

  1. Why is it so difficult to improve the teacher-evaluation process?   2. Another look at the Measures of Effective Teaching study   3. Conditions for the continuous improvement of teaching   4. Counteracting summer reading loss   5. Using Reading Recovery techniques in guided reading groups   6. Keeping our technology use under control   7. Advice for leaders   8. The qualities of an effective high-school athletic coach   9. Consistency with classroom discipline 10. Are speed reading courses effective? 11. Short items: (a) World population growth animated; (b) Two centuries of U.S. immigration animated; (c) Common Core math sequence; (d) Survey on teacher evaluation

being able to mobilize energy when it’s needed – depends on two things: (a) alternating between intense work and recovery; and (b) developing regular rituals to build in recovery.

For those of us who are not professional athletes, regular workouts each week, coupled with good nutrition and sleep, make a major difference in work productivity and enjoyment.

Positive emotions have a remarkable impact on reducing physiological stress, whereas negative emotions, even simulated, increase stress. The key, psychologists have found, is to “act as if.”

Here are some workplace conditions that increase emotional labor: -   A mismatch between your personality and what’s expected on the job; -   A misalignment of values, especially if what you’re asked to do is in conflict with what you believe; -   A workplace culture in which particular ways of expressing emotion are endorsed, or not endorsed.

The key to improving cognitive work is focus, say Loehr and Schwartz. A big part of that is managing down-time – knowing the body’s need for breaks every 90-120 minutes – and using meditation and visualization.

Practiced regularly, meditation quiets the mind, the emotions, and the body, promoting energy recovery.” Experienced meditators need considerably less sleep and have enhanced creativity and productivity.

Spiritual capacity – By this, Loehr and Schwartz mean “the energy that is unleashed by tapping into one’s deepest values and defining a strong sense of purpose.”

Sometimes, when we’re doing work that isn’t in synch with how we feel, we have to put on our professional game face. That effort is known among psychologists as “emotional labor” – remaining energetic and upbeat despite a bad night’s sleep,

framing his response in positive language.

If you’re in a job that’s meaningful and largely aligned with your values, the best way to reduce emotional labor, says David, is to substitute surface acting with what she calls “deep acting.” Some tips:             • Remind yourself why you’re in the job you’re in.

Explore “want to” versus “have to” thinking. What aspects of the job energize you? How can other aspects be made more efficient and pleasant?

Do some job crafting. Can you and your boss tweak the work so it’s of greater value to you and the organization? Or is there a new project that would be fun and productive?

“Drill-and-practice is boring. But thinking, for most students most of the time, is actually fun.”

four strategies to engage students in higher-order thinking:             • Open questions – Every lesson should have two or three of these to highlight key content and thinking skills.

Wait time is important. Think time, no hands up, is a good admonition. “If you don’t provide enough wait time, you’ll get either no responses or surface-level responses,

In all-class discussions, teachers should resist the temptation to comment themselves, instead asking specific follow-up questions to get other students involved.

All too many student projects are simple regurgitation,

Students thinking, not just retelling

The way out of this dynamic is posing a thought-provoking problem

Another approach is asking “what if” and “what else” questions to push students to expand or elaborate on what they’re studying

Self-assessment – “Students who can self-assess are poised to be life-long learners,” says Brookhart. “They are poised to use self-regulation strategies and to be their own best coaches as they learn. They are able to ask focused questions when they don’t understand or when they’re stuck.”

Teach students to self-assess with rubrics. It’s important that the rubric goes beyond the basic level and stipulates higher-level criteria like stating a position, defending one’s reasoning, using supportive details.

Use confidence ratings. For example, students might be asked to use the “fist of fives” on their chest to indicate how confident they are that they understand a particular term or concept

Have students co-create success criteria. Studying material with which students are familiar, they can jointly create what the teacher and students will look for in their work.

consultant Karin Hess suggests analyzing student work in three layers: first describing the student work we actually see (or what students tell about it); then interpreting what the evidence might mean (specific to the intended purpose); and then evaluating what next steps should be taken. Hess outlines how the process of analyzing student work can be helpful to teaching and learning:

• Purpose #1: Improving the quality of tasks/prompts and scoring guides – Piloting tasks and looking at student work helps to clarify prompts, make tasks accessible and engaging for all students, trim unnecessary components, modify the wording of scoring rubrics, and tweak questions so they will measure deeper thinking.

Students can use assessment evidence to set and monitor progress, reflect on themselves as learners, and evaluate the quality of their own work. “Valuing both one’s struggles and successes at accomplishing smaller learning targets over time has proven to have a profound influence on deepening motivation, developing independence as a learner, and building what we have come to know as ‘a growth mindset,’”

Purpose #3: Monitoring progress over time – A good pre-assessment focuses on the core learning or prerequisite skills that students will need to build on, and teachers can sort and work with students according to what they need to learn to be successful in the unit.

Purpose #2: Making key instructional decisions – Observing and taking notes on students’ responses to this task gave teachers two specific teaching points.

What does the student know now that he or she didn’t know how to do as well on the first task? What were the areas of improvement?

Which piece of work comes closest to the expectations? What’s the evidence?

Purpose #4: Engaging students in peer- and self-assessment – One approach is having students look at two pieces of work by other students side by side and asking them (for example): -   What does each student know and understand and where might they improve?

Purpose #5: Better understanding how learning progresses over time – Many skills, concepts, and misconceptions revealed in student work analysis are not explicitly addressed in curriculum standards. Looking at students’ learning trajectories in interim assessments and student work can guide teachers in the next step that students at different levels of progress need to take. • Purpose #6: Building content and pedagogical expertise –

it is analyzing evidence in student work that causes teachers to reflect on how students learn and how to make their instructional and assessment practices more effective.”

“students who engage with rich, strategically-designed tasks on a regular basis learn that finding the answer is not as personally meaningful as knowing how to apply knowledge in new situations and explain the reasoning that supports their thinking.”

13 dimensions of school leadership

Only about six percent of teachers are ineffective, she continues. For the remaining 94 percent, the emphasis should shift from ratings to learning.

And what do we know about professional learning? That it requires: • Active intellectual engagement – That is, self-assessment, reflection on practice, and on-going conversations; • Trust – “Fear shuts people down,” says Danielson. “Learning, after all, entails vulnerability. The culture of the school and of the district must be one that encourages risk-taking.” • Challenge – “The culture must include an expectation that every teacher will engage in a career-long process of learning,” she says, “one that is never ‘finished.’ Teaching is simply too complex for anyone to believe that there is no more to learn.” • Teacher collaboration – PD and supervisory suggestions rarely drive classroom improvements, says Danielson. “Overwhelmingly, most teachers report that they learn more from their colleagues than from an ‘expert’ in a workshop… or being directed by a supervisor to read a certain book or take a particular course.” Most often, classroom improvement comes from working with colleagues analyzing student work and planning curriculum.

a new system should include: -   An emphasis on professional learning in a culture of trust and inquiry; -   A career ladder from probationary to continuing status after about three years; from that point on, the main emphasis becomes professional learning; -   Differentiation in the evaluation system, with novice teachers getting support from a mentor and being evaluated every year; -   Career teachers assessed periodically to ensure continuing quality; -   Teacher leadership positions (mentor, instructional coach, team leader) for which experienced teachers in good standing are eligible to apply; these come with training and support, extra compensation, or released time during the regular school day; -   The ability to identify seriously underperforming teachers, support their improvement, and if sufficient progress isn’t made, deny them tenure or continuing employment.

“Former service members tend to be committed to their students and tenacious in their efforts to improve,” say Parham and Gordon. Some early studies suggest that over time, veterans are stronger in classroom management, instructional practices, and student results.

Veterans who have had life-and-death combat experiences “tend to have low tolerance for petty politics in schools or for initiatives that seem unrelated to educating students. Former service members may sometimes seem overly assertive in discussions with colleagues.”

Veterans entering the classroom may feel like novices and have to adjust to their students not snapping to attention when given an order.

Veterans who are used to explicit operating procedures have to decode the unspoken expectations on how to relate to colleagues, handle student discipline, deal with parent concerns, get supplies, and get help.

“Discussions of shared experiences, shared values, and shared goals can help veterans and other teachers begin to build relationships.”

This might consist of a well-chosen mentor (similar to their “battle buddy” in the military), a support team (perhaps a grade-level or subject team that meets regularly), and a support network with other veterans in the school or district.

Veterans need an especially thorough briefing as they enter a new setting, including policies, procedures (copying machines, grading, and more), formal and informal rules, and a map of the school.

up to speed on teaching priorities, curriculum breadth versus depth, dealing with student differences, lesson planning, instructional materials, and, of course, discipline.

Support for this common challenge can come from peer coaching, observing expert teachers, workshops, articles and books, and seminars.

Effective teachers assign tasks that require explanation or require students to organize material in meaningful ways. Stories and mnemonics are also helpful in getting students to impose meaning on hard-to-remember content.

Effective teachers make content explicit through carefully paced explanation, modeling, and examples; present new information through multiple modalities; and make good use of worked problems.

Rather, the mastery of new concepts happens in fits and starts. “Content should not be kept from students because it is ‘developmentally inappropriate,’” says the report. “To answer the question ‘is the student ready?’ it’s best to consider ‘has the student mastered the prerequisites?’”

we shouldn’t push skeptical students to say, “Natural selection is one of the most important ways species came to be differentiated.” Better for them to say, “Most scientists think natural selection is one of the best explanations.”

Practice is essential to learning new facts, but not all practice is equally effective.

Frequent quizzes with low stakes, and students testing themselves, help establish long-term retention through the “retrieval effect.”

Each subject has basic facts that support higher-level learning by freeing working memory and illuminating applications.

Students learn new ideas by linking them to what they already know.

To transfer learning to a novel problem, students need to know the problem’s context and its underlying structure.

Explicitly comparing the examples helps students remember the underlying similarities. With multi-step procedures, students need to identify and label the sub-steps so they can apply them to similar problems. It’s also helpful to alternate concrete examples and abstract representations.

Motivation is improved if students believe that intelligence and ability can be improved through hard work, and if adults respond to successful work by praising effective effort rather than innate ability. It’s also helpful for teachers to set learning goals (e.g., mastering specific material) rather than performance goals (competing with others or vying for approval).

Intrinsic motivation leads to better long-term outcomes than extrinsic motivation.

It’s difficult to gauge one’s own learning and understanding. That’s why students need to learn how to monitor their own learning through assessments, self-testing, and explanation.

Students will be more motivated and successful when they believe they belong and are accepted.

Teachers need to recognize and dispel a set of incorrect beliefs about teaching and learning: -   Misconception #1: Students have different “learning styles.” -   Misconception #2: Humans use only 10 percent of their brains. -   Misconception #3: People are preferentially “right-brained” or “left-brained” in how they think. -   Misconception #4: Novices and experts think in all the same ways. -   Misconception #5: Cognitive development progresses in age-related stages.

having students work in groups for 30-45 minutes coming up with test questions that might be used (or reworded) in the actual exam. This is a two-fer, says Lang: it not only gives students a sense of control over their learning but also serves as an effective review session.

Open assessments – This involves leaving 10 percent of the syllabus for an assignment that students create with the instructor.

Class constitutions – Having students collectively come up with ground rules for a course gives them a collegial sense of working together toward a shared purpose.

“Teaching evolutionary theory is not in and of itself religious indoctrination.” That’s because evolution is not a religion. “How could a religion have no beliefs about the supernatural? No rituals? No moral commandments?”

ask students to learn about evolution without insisting that they believe it.

Good feedback is specific and clear, focused on the task rather than the student, explanatory, and directed toward improvement rather than merely verifying performance.

“It turns out children are better able to cope if they understand what they’re going through is normal, that it affects everyone, and that it will pass,” comments Adam Gamoran of the William T. Grant Foundation. “How we think about a stressful situation influences how we feel and how we perform.” Studies like this, he says, “show how deeply intertwined are cognition and emotion.”

use of Twitter in his middle-school science classroom

Connecting students to reputable, relevant scientific people and organizations in real time

Twitter as authentic audience – Students constantly tweet ideas, assignments, projects, suggestions, and photographs to each other, broadening the reach of their thinking.

Twitter as embedded literacy – Students get plenty of practice with succinct writing as they share analyses and observations.

Managing students’ encounters with objectionable material from the outside world, including occasional use of profanity and sexually suggestive follower requests.

Comparing services – Proportional reasoning, equations, creating and analyzing graphs, and number sense; -   Planning a budget – Organizing and representing information and number sense; -   Determining the costs and payoffs of higher education – Percentages, compound interest, and rates; -   Playing the Stock Market Game – Ratios, proportional reasoning, reading and analyzing reports and graphs, and algebraic thinking (e.g., gains and losses).

“The term generally refers to using a wide variety of hands-on activities (such as building, computer programming, and even sewing) to support academic learning and the development of a mindset that values playfulness and experimentation, growth and iteration, and collaboration and community. Typically, ‘making’ involves attempting to solve a particular problem, creating a physical or digital artifact, and sharing that product with a larger audience. Often, such work is guided by the notion that process is more important than results.”

Perspective taking, also known as cognitive empathy, occurs when a person is able to imagine herself in the situation of another.

Teachers can be role models who, by example, show students the power of empathy in relationships.

Ask students to break into small groups and discuss how important it is to understand that many people disagree with us simply because they have a different point of view. Debrief the student comments.

In the classroom, literature can be used to help students see a situation from different perspectives.

We designed the HEAR strategy to help students recognize and block out that noise as they devote their attention to listening to one another. The HEAR strategy consists of these steps: Halt: Stop whatever else you are doing, end your internal dialogue on other thoughts, and free your mind to give the speaker your attention. Engage: Focus on the speaker

Anticipate: By looking forward to what the speaker has to say, you are acknowledging that you will likely learn something new and interesting,

Replay: Think about what the speaker is saying. Analyze and paraphrase it in your mind or in discussion with the speaker and other classmates.

Be aware of your feelings and thoughts about your ability to understand and share in the feelings of others. With metacognitive awareness, we can all become more effective at taking another’s perspective throughout our lives.

This is going to be SLA’s seventh year. In those seven years I’ve had seven superintendents. [Laughter, applause.]

And what is driving all of the decisions right now in cities all over this country? It’s this question: ‘How good are your test scores?’

For example, in this state [New York], the state-wide English Language Arts Regents exam was a high-stakes test for students and for teachers. It determined students promotion. It determined whether or not teachers would keep their jobs. It determined whether or not schools would stay open. There was question about a talking pineapple. And again, Adam referenced this earlier. But again, the amazing thing was that they claimed that they took it from this children’s author. They interviewed the children’s author. He said they got it wrong!

do you know who made the test? Anybody? Pearson. Not educators. Not state officials. Not the way that it used to be, when at least these tests were designed by people who did not have a financial stake in the game. Instead, this test was designed by a company that was deeply, deeply concerned that it be financially profitable.

educators have more stuff thrown at them than they’ve ever had to think about before. I am the child of a lifelong teacher and a union lawyer, so all of these ideas are incredibly derivative and I take them from my parents

we wonder why so many teachers push back as we say, ‘Oh and by the way, you’ve got to learn Twitter and Edmodo and this and that and the other and all of these tools.

powerful question: Is school relevant? And behind that is the question that many of us as teachers are asking: Am I relevant?

t if you ask her, ‘Who are you?’ the first thing she says isn’t ‘Oh, I’m a publicist.’ But if you ask a teacher, ‘Who are you?’ they are going to say, ‘I am a teacher.’ Who we are is wrapped up deeply in what we do and what do is under attack and changing rapidly, and that uncertainty is very difficult to deal with.

Johnny Learned to Read. Johnny went to the Store. Johnny went to the Park. Johnny killed himself because learning was boring! [Laughter.]

I respect what Deven Black said about the idea of ‘get out of school before the school kills the joy of creativity and kills that joy of learning that you have’ I also believe that school can be amazing places of learning. Schools can teach us how to learn, more than any fact or figure that we can get in a classroom. What schools should teach us is how learn, that metacognitive practice of figuring out, ‘How do I learn best? How do I make sense of our world?’ And when I do that, schools can help us learn to live.

Spanish 4 class at Science Leadership Academy. Now, what the kids had to do was to write an essay about hwo they were. Identity is a frequent theme at SLA. The essay was of two parts: One, what was visible about them and, two, what was invisible about them.

Schools can help us learn to live.

The incredibly reflective moment they were going through was, ‘How could we have prevented this as teachers? What are we doing wrong, that these are the students we are creating? These are the citizens we are creating?’

I think that when you are told the whole purpose you are learning this stuff is so you can work for somebody someday and that you can be part of the global economy. I think that’s an isolating feeling. I don’t think that builds community or gets us where we need to go.

we need to start talking about ‘the global citizen.’ We need to start talking about community

We would instead make sure that every child had a deep and powerful understanding of statistics before they left formal education

We’re creating a profoundly innumerate society and solving problems that we face today are going to need people who understand numbers.

but school belongs to our best, most powerful democratic instincts as a society. And what we are seeing right now, is a lot of people saying that schools need to be just like business.

If not that corporate model, then what model?

there’s a profound difference between these two statements: ‘I care about kids, and I care for kids.

We need to stop saying, ‘I teach math. I teach English. I teach art.’ We need to start saying, ‘I teach kids.’ And then we build systems and structures that reflect that.

we’ve got to understand that an inquiry-driven education is the most powerful way to learn

By the way, there is one questions that every teacher should ask a bazillion times a day that they don’t know the answer to. That question is, ‘What do you think?’

Want to see a really amazing thing with a group of kids? Read a book with them freshman year. Have them write their reflections on the book. Read it with them again in their senior year. See what the book holds for them now. Teach them that ideas and answers can change. And that that’s good.

It’s called the Dialogic Curriculum. It’s by a woman named Patricia L. Stock.

This isn’t just about talking. What I see in a lot of classrooms when I visit schools is people talking and listening—but not really. I see in a lot of classrooms debate, where kids are listening for the thing they can disagree with. So that way they can make their point. Right? We’ve all had that experience where the teacher says, ‘Wait a second, I’ll get back to your comment in a minute.’ Three or four more kids have said the thing and the kid says the exact same thing that they were going to say four questions ago, because they didn’t listen to the four things that the other kids said. We need to teach kids that we can argue and we can discuss to learn.

Teach kids to build their ideas off of others. Teach them not just to disagree, but run a classroom where no one is allowed to talk until they first express their idea, before they first echo back what they’ve heard from someone else. What did I learn from what you just said? ‘Well, I understand that you just said this, and I thought that this was really interesting. And where I found disagreement or disharmony was here.’ But first I’ve got to acknowledge the things that you said. First I’ve got to acknowledge that you said that with which I can find common cause. Teach kids to build, not just tear down.

What they’re selling to us as personalized learning is, ‘everybody does the exact same content, only at your own pace.’ That’s not personal!

If someone shows up and says, ‘We’ve got a great new personalized learning system. You put the kids on the computer and they all go at their own pace.’ Say to them, ‘That’s not personal. When do they get to do the things they care about?’

This is two of our students competing in a kinetic sculpture contest. Think about that. And what’s cool about it is that they built this device in their engineering classroom. Our kids in our engineering classrooms have built a solar water heater, and Engineers Without Borders took the actual thing that the kids built, shipped it to Sierra Leone, where what our kids built is now being used to heat water in order to sterilize instruments in a hospital for amputee victims. Our kids have built flow-process biodiesel generators, and they have then released the designs to anyone who wanted to use them, under a Creative Commons license. What we found out was that students in Central and South America built what are kids designed and are using it to take their schools ‘off the grid’ by powering their own schools.

Ask powerful questions. Seek out answers. Build real stuff. That’s inquiry-driven project-based learning.

world

What we are really trying to do is help our kids change the

Project-based learning is when the kids own head, heart and hands—when the work that they do, that matters to them, is the most important thing in a classroom—is the highest form of work that gets done. That’s true project-based learning.

In every single class at SLA, for all four years that they are there, every quarter has what we call a benchmark project in each class that that allows every child to build something that serves as the signpost of their learning every single quarter.

nquiry—what are the questions we can ask; Research—how do we find the answers to those questions; Collaboration—how do we work together to make those answers deeper, better and richer; Presentation—how do we share what we’ve learned; and Reflection—

You must build systems and structures to allow kids to do real stuff, and then get out of their way. By the way, once they have, you’ve got to let them share it.

You can share stuff in the physical world, you can share stuff in the virtual world, but kids have got to understand that they can be expert voices in the world. Create the space for them to do it. You don’t have to tell them how.

She said, ‘I just expose them to a whole bunch of different ideas and then said, go learn the stuff you need to learn.’

you have to share what you know

Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) is the founding Principal of the Science Leadership Academy (SLA)

honored by the White House as a Champion of Change for his work in education reform. In June 2010, Chris was named as one of the “30 Most Influential People in EdTech”