Attributes Outweigh Skills

 

Attributes Outweigh Skills

 

             The first time I was forced to confront this concept was when I began teaching for Niagara University which was now almost 15 years ago.  One of my friends and colleagues at Niagara had been advocating for the use of this concept in conjunction with the assessment of teaching skills as a measure of future success in the classroom.  He argued, and it didn’t take me long to come to agree with his position, that the successful teacher needed to have the dispositions required to be a good teacher.  If you look at the graphic above, it shouldn’t be too hard to understand just what was being referred to.  

             When I became used to my position at Niagara and had become less of a novice in the program, I found it very easy to argue the case to my students that it was one thing to know how to write a good lesson plan and how to assess students using tests or rubrics, but the difference between a successful classroom teacher and the opposite was the attitude towards students and teaching that one brought to one’s assignment, regardless of the class to be taught.  We would talk about what it meant to be born to teach and they soon realized that what that really meant was having the affects, the dispositions towards the other, towards the student, towards the task that made it possible to reach out to a student and have that hand accepted willingly and happily.  

           Over the years, it seems to me, the argument to be made for affect coming before skills has only gotten stronger. When you think about why some students are thriving online today given the need to do all their learning online, those who are the most highly motivated to be successful   are those who are taking the steps necessary to figure out the process of being online.  The teachers who seem to be doing the best are those who like teaching to begin with and will do anything that makes it easier for them to reach their students and help them learn.  If you want to help your students, you will find a way.  The old adage that where there is a will, there is a way more than applies here.  

           In conjunction with this conversation though, it is crucial to talk about grit.  This was not something we talked about a generation ago, but it is certainly more than necessary to identify it in the students and teachers of today.  To explain why, let me point out that when our kids were small I used to say that I had a weed and an orchid for children.  My orchid needed a hot house, a very narrow spectrum of conditions in which she was able to thrive, but our weed did just fine wherever he was, whomever he was with and whatever he was asked to do.  Our orchid though had grit.  She didn’t come by it honestly or naturally, but she acquired it because of the challenges she had as a teenager. She learned how to pick herself up by her bootstraps and move forward.  

             This to me is the most important of all the dispositions, whether we are talking about teachers or students. Teachers need to have it so that, no matter what happens today, tomorrow, they will be back eager to succeed and do better than the day before. I students need to have it so that they cn learn from their mistakes and move on.   Today, more than ever, we need to know how important it is to regroup and try again. I used to tell my students about the little engine tha could.  For all of us, it is worth remembering that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.         

 Making Thinking Visible

 

             Recently, there has been an uptick in the number of professional articles that refer to thinking skills and how to encourage them in the classroom.  It is well known that thinking and pondering about topics and subjects leads to the individual student reaching for connections which in turn contributes to deep learning.  Deep learning is what happens when new connections are made to concepts already existent in the functioning brain.  For example, let’s say we ask a group of students to create bridges using popsicle sticks. This is a challenge that often presents itself in classrooms.  So, you provide the class with the popsicle sticks and the glue guns and the spaces to work and then you set them to work.  Sometimes, you can precede this activity with some pictures of bridges in various places and class discussions about how they are constructed and what they think makes the bridges strong.  This would create an activity for students to THINK about what they are seeing. We have to draw attention to what we want them to think about, but then, in classroom discussions, students will build on each other’s thoughts and contribute ideas. 

             Just talking about why bridges are strong or weak is not sufficient to enable students to remember the reasons or to create new learning pathways to support their ideas.  You have to write things down for them because some students will not remember and others won’t grasp the concepts at all. But this is all normal and natural. So then you can encourage a student to make lists for the students and allow them to specify how to write the concepts down.  By enlisting student scribes, you are enabling more students to engage with the thought process. Right there is an example of how we are making thinking visible.  You cannot rush this activity nor should you because you want the thinking to become abstract.  When students begin to create images in their heads of what you are talking about, you are contributing to deep learning. 

          The next step is to enable the students to experiment with their ideas.  They have begun to think about what makes for bridge strength and what factors might be necessary to consider when functioning as an engineer and planning a building.  Lest you are reading this and thinking that this is above and beyond any class, consider that there are all kinds of bridges and all kinds of designs and just enumerating all the factors that limit how and what to build is cultivating engagement with the students and thinking about the challenge.  All kids like to build things and they are not afraid to take risks and that is precisely what you want. You want them to experiment.  So from here, I would suggest that you turn to the actual building of the bridges with popsicle sticks.  You work with the students to enumerate how to consider a structure successful either using a rubric or a checklist, but they are evolving a mental determination of just what the challenge entails.  Then you let them go to work.  You encourage group work because, you tell them, no one works on their own anymore.  They will understand that these things are done in groups but you talk about why that is so.  You want them to understand that when we work in teams, we put ideas together and we become better because we all have individual ideas. 

           So after giving them lots of time to play around and experiment, you lt them talk about why some of them were successful, somewhat, and some were not. Not every group will be successful, but that is what you want, because you want them to be able to debrief, to talk about what they did right and what they did wrong and why some of them are more successful than others.  Hopefully, you will allow just as much time afterwards to talk about the results as you did to talk about the planning. Obviously, everything has gone from abstract to real but while they are now dealing with real bridge building and the problems that arose, they are deepening their knowledge.  They will be thinking about what they accomplished and why and analyzing what went right and what went wrong. This is also deep thinking.  

           This is what it means to use problem-based learning to help students acquire knowledge, skills and affect but it is also a very real and fun way for students to actually visualize their thinking.  You can use this same strategy over and over again and the kids will remember the challenges that you present to them while they are acquiring knew knowledge, skills and affect.  The only way this works is if you do it over and over again.  It becomes part of their learning repertoire that way.  

Teacher Shortages Leading to Change

Teacher Shortages Leading to Change

 

             Everywhere you turn and everything you read is pointing to a crisis in not one but two professions as a result of the pandemic.  This past week, every doctor and every nurse interviewed on the course of the pandemic has indicated an increased level of frustration with the public and how it is refusing to acknowledge the severity of the situation caused by the variants of the virus.  While hospitals are overwhelmed everywhere, teachers are complaining about the workload placed upon them as a result of having to pivot back and forth between in-school and at home learning.  Everyone is tired, no more so than the women in the medical and teaching professions because they are the ones bearing the brunt of having to be at home with their kids and teaching or straddling the two things.  The reality is that, when this is all over, hospitals and doctors will return to a more normal pace of life and the burdens of medical care will diminish, at the same time as some of the professionals will quit, due to burn out.  While the burdens will diminish and retirements will occur at the same time in those fields, work will increase when schools return to full function because there will be deficits to catch up on in students at every turn and on every level. There will however be huge gaps in the workforce to meet the needs of the schools.

             Thanks to my doctoral studies, I did a bit of reading on the unforeseen consequences of technological change.  What was and still is apparent is that every change forces more changes and often in ways one was unable to predict before.  This is also going to be true of schools.  And I think that the changes that will come are those that needed to change anyways.  

             Take for example online learning.  It has become apparent that online learning can, in some instances and cases, admirably fill in for in-class instruction, but there is still a lot to be learned about when it works and when it doesn’t.  Sadly, however, as several editorials have indicated already, politicians looking for ways to cut costs are already seeing online learning as a money saver.  It was suggested two decades ago that online learning would lead to cuts in the numbers of teachers required to support and educational system.  But what will take much longer to learn from will be how teaching has to change to meet the moment.  For example, online learning works if there is an increase in the contacts individually between teacher and student.  You can’t just put 30 or 40 students in front of a teacher online and expect good things to happen.  You can put 20 kids into a class with one teacher who reaches out and gets to know all his or her students deeply and intimately, in terms of their learning needs.  This our current teachers are not prepared for. So, here there will be years of instability while professionals learn how to make on-line and in-class learning work successfully.  

             There are also lessons to be learned about ages and stages of students and how to mix in-class and on-line learning depending upon the child’s needs.  Older students will need to learn how to be more self-directed and younger students will have to be introduced to online learning slowly and gradually.  This will mean changes to how we prepare teachers for their careers in education and how we prepare administrators for the physical changes that will accompany the changes in how we bring schools and teachers together. Change is coming but it will not be easy and society will need to be patient. Inevitably the changes will be good once they are fully. Implemented, but until then……..there will be lots of bumps on the road.    

  

Puppetry In My Art Program

Puppetry In My Art Program

             One of the headlines that came across my desk this week was one referring to a special new program in the state of Vermont aimed at helping young people to deal with anxieties through the use of puppets.  When I read the headline, it reminded me once again of how often I had ideas throughout my career that were way ahead of their time.  I look back at times like this and wonder why, if I had the insight to know a good idea when I saw it or read of it, I didn’t have enough brains to use it to advance my own career.  I never thought of these things originally as being ahead of their time, but rather just good ideas that I should implement in my classroom program.

             Back in the day, I taught art on Rotary for Grades 4 to 8.  I had no art room of my own and so I had to figure out how to maximize the use of space in my classroom.  I came up with the idea of doing units using different kinds of media which I used with all the grades. So, all the grades used the same tools, just to accomplish different projects.  I had a pottery unit, a painting unit, a chalk pastel unit, a construction paper unit, and so forth.  So, one year, I decided that I wanted to do puppets with all the grades.  When I chose to do something, I had to come up with different tasks that were in keeping with the skill levels of the specific grades. Pottery was no different.

             So, I determined that the youngest students would make sock puppets, and another grade would make stick puppets and I wanted the senior grades to make marionettes.  I had this brilliant idea that the Grade Eights would write puppet plays in their regular classroom program and I would help them in Art to make the actual stage and puppets.  I went to the classroom teacher who was also, at that time, chasing an advancement in her career, ironically.  I laid my plan out at her feet and she pooh-poohed it from the beginning. In her mind, puppets were too childish for Grade 8’s.  So, we did something else, and I was madder than hell. 

             I could not believe that someone would actually think puppets and plays were too childish for Grade 7 or Grade 8 students.  The two classes were combined at this point because the two teachers were team teaching.  I thought the idea was golden and I got turned down flat.  Now I see this headline about the use of puppets as a way for children to hide behind something to help give voice to their issues.  It still makes perfect sense to me.  This was the same woman who ended up being my principal much later and castigated me for making changes in a program because of something parents had wanted, and I tried to accommodate.  

             I had my comeuppance though, in the end.  I got the senior students to bring in old clothes and they designed their own stuffed people which got placed all over the school.  They used paper to stuff the puppets, and some were in chairs outside, which was another novel idea that the kids always liked.  The local paper came and took pictures of the stuffed people and I had a couple of pictures in the paper.  The principal at the time used to sometimes walk into the bench near his office that had two large stuffed puppets on it and the principal was heard apologizing for bumping into them.  I had a really good laugh over that one.  

             The moral of the story is that one should not be afraid to try new things, especially if you perceive that the kids will actually love the activity.   Every time I did something like that, something novel, the kids loved it.  I often think I was not that great a teacher, but I write these lines and I realize that I was not that great in some areas but really great in others.  I can understand why my students still remember me……because I did memorable things with them.  What more can I ever ask of myself than that I am remembered kindly, even fondly, by my students.

 

 

Games and Gamification in the Classroom

 Games and Gamification in the Classroom

 

                From almost the beginning of my career as a classroom teacher, I used to subscribe to magazines published to cover topics of interest in education.  I was always a pioneer of sorts although I would have never thought of myself that way when I first got into a classroom.  But I was always looking for ways to enrich my teaching practice.  These magazines always featured some really great ideas for teachers and one time, I happened to pick up a magazine with an article featuring the use of games to help teach mathematics.  Back in the day, it would have been like using Monopoly to learn concepts concerning the use of money and practicing arithmetic skills.  Snakes and Ladders could help young children practice their counting skills and checkers could address the need to concentrate and think strategically.  So naturally I tried to keep games on hand and use them.

                From there, it was only a few steps to creating your own game and making it a challenge for art and mathematics.  So, students would think about board games and how to design their own that would feature the same ideas of arithmetic and numeracy.  These were taken out of curriculum ideas for gifted education but if you mixed students in small groups ensuring that there would be gifted students matched with students more challenged in the classroom, there was still much to be gained by devoted classroom time to creating games.  Besides, the small group work enabled one to help students learn how to communicate nicely and properly and work in teams effectively.

                Now of course, board games are sort of passee. There are lots of people who still have them but more frequently, it is using electronic tools and bringing Artificial Intelligence and avatars and all those kinds of things into the classroom. There are lots of parents who are no pleased to see these things in use but they play an important part in helping kids develop a wide range of skills that will only become more important in the years ahead.  The trick is to figure out how to guide students in using the games and not just playing effectively but again, thinking strategically and understanding how the digital world works.  As well, the teacher has to be moving about all the time to enforce proper rules of engagement and so forth.  

                I am sure a lot of people reading this have images of GameBoys and Xboxes and so forth,  but remember that increasingly, work is no longer face to face and knowing how to work with an avatar and manipulate behaviour on screen is a tremendously valuable skill.  The. Day is fast approaching when every classroom will feature artificial intelligence and robotics and the sooner we see these tools as part of the classroom, the sooner we will know that we are helping to educate our students for future success, not just drilling specific, easily assessed skills.  The difference between the past and the future is that in the past we were drilled on skills and that supposedly prepared us for a world of routinized workplaces.  However, in the future the highest paid jobs will go to those who understand how to conceptually move things around virtually and move into new frontiers.  Just think about the difference between operating on a man or woman using an operating theatre and tools manipulated by hand as opposed to operating using a robotic arm and having to be able to manipulate that arm using a computer.  There is where the future lies.