Success breeds success... or not...

For years and years, I have believed that success breeds success.  Lately, I have been thinking about this statement more deeply.  How much success is necessary?  Is a tiny amount of success enough?  Can continuous success be a detriment to growth and effort?  What happens when there is no success for an extended period of time?

The answers to these questions can be seen in every school.  The kid who makes straight A's all the time and finds school to be easy may not understand that less-than-perfect is still pretty good.  This student may also suffer when that first B shows up on the report card.  I have witnessed an interesting connection over the years.  The later in a school a child receives his first B on a report card, the bigger the reaction.  Seeing a six foot tall 8th grade boy cry like a baby because of that first B is not a pretty sight.  That did not mean that all of his grades throughout his years did not accurately reflect his learning.  They may have!  But did we do this kid a disservice by providing him an easy avenue of all A's long the way?

Likewise, we all know the kids who barely scrape by.  Or, they don't scrape by at all.  They simply muddle through their day with very limited exposure to success.  We work our tails off in an attempt to catch them up.  Hopefully, we design learning experiences for these kids that provide some small glimpses of success so they will yearn for more success!  Lots of these kids don't see their personal little successes because they are too focused on the fact that they cannot succeed like the rest of the kids in the class.  They want nothing more than to succeed like the rest of the class.  But they don't so they become completely disenchanted.  With no light at the end of their little tunnels, they give up.  With no comparable success, why try?  We all know kids like this.

How much success is necessary to facilitate future success?  The answer is different for everyone.  How do we create learning scenarios for every kid that will provide the correct amount of challenge and the correct amount of success?

I wonder...then I write!

Alan November says that most questions that we ask our students in schools can be answered fairly easily with  a quick internet search.  He goes on to say that in this country, we essentially see education as the lining up of facts.  He wants us to teach kids to ask questions.

He is not the only guy to say this.  Warren Berger loves great questions.  His book, "A More Beautiful Question," is excellent!  He discusses the importance of questions.  Especially the ones that do not have easy answers.

Earlier today, I was interviewed by a great teacher who is beginning her grad school experience.  She is in the first week of her first class and she was asked to conduct three interviews with folks from our school district.  The questions all dealt with leadership.

For so many of the questions, I found myself quoting Covey, or thinking Covey, or trying to channel my inner Covey!  It was an excellent opportunity to think about myself and my beliefs.

The last question asked me to offer one or two pieces of advice to her.  For that question, I wish that I had been given lots of time to think about it.  Just two???  Interesting!

I immediately thought of the things I do to drive my own improvement.  First, I try to always have a question that drives my thinking.  I am always investigating a question of some sort.  I told her to always have a question.  Always be curious.  Second, I told her to write about that question every day.  It doesn't take long.  Five minutes.  Putting your thoughts into written words puts them in order.

What is your question right now?  What makes you think?  Write about it!

Think or DIE!

Eric Weinstein says that we must, "Think or die!"

Sounds a bit extreme, doesn't it?  To put it in context, this quote comes from an interview discussing his opinions on change, innovation, and status quo.  Doing nothing of significant difference is like like death.

He also says that simply choosing a different tool out of your toolbox is not innovation.  He believes that true innovation comes from creating new tools.

Educators talk all the time about needing more tools in their toolboxes to meet the needs of every learner.  Which tool will be the ONE that fixes the kid that has always struggled???  Indeed, it is one of our toughest challenges!  How do I strive to help each and every single student find success in my classroom and in my school?

By the time a child has struggled through a few years on your campus, there is a good chance that every tool you own and quite a few borrowed ones have been tried on the kid.  There is not a single tool, strategy, program, or app that has succeeded for this kid.  Now what?  Time to create a new tool!  Time to do something different!

How far outside of the ordinary are you willing to go?  How much difference are you willing to allow to create a successful learning experience for this kid?  Remember, nothing has worked so far.  Will a little bit of difference make the difference?  Or...do you need to do things that have never been done before?

Be brave, have fun, and create something new!

Stop light volume

Early in my teaching career, I had a construction paper stoplight in my room.  Each color on the stop light represented the desired volume.  Green meant talking was OK.  Yellow meant that whispering was OK.  Red was for silence.  I moved the light based on my desired volume for each activity.  It was well-planned.  I purposely chose the volume that would best fit each learning activity.  I also used it to control the volume when it seemed to get too loud.

Twenty years later, Amazon sells a Yacker Tracker for a hundred bucks and it senses the volume and changes the light automatically!

If the students were working on projects or inquiry-based lessons, the light was green.  Talking was OK.  Green was also lit for projects and cooperative learning activities.  Yellow was lit for independent work.  Red was lit during reading time and some independent work activities that I chose to be silent.  I can't remember why???

The problem with the stoplight was that my kids didn't always agree with the volume that I wanted.  So I spent too much time trying to enforce the "correct" volume.  It didn't seem to matter how many times we practiced the correct volume, I always had kids who showed me they didn't agree.  After too much time and energy, I finally asked myself, "Why?"

I asked several other teachers for better strategies to control the volume,  I wanted more tricks in my bag.  I tried several of them, but the results were the same.

I looked another direction for an answer.  I looked at my rationale behind the different volumes.  I tried to simplify things so that my students could better understand the expectations and more importantly, so I could maximize learning and spend less time fixing the volume.

I started by asking myself, "When does it absolutely need to be silent?"

I came up with two answers.  When someone is talking to the whole class, everyone else should be quiet.  That one seemed easy.  Also, some assessments needed to be quiet.  Several other learning activities crossed the board when I thought about silent.  What about reading time?  I decided that short conversations about reading made for better learning.  What about videos?  Short conversations about the videos made for better learning.  What about work that was to be graded?  This one was easy to let go as I strongly preferred a standards-based grading system!

I also asked myself, "When is whispering the correct volume?"  I listed several possibilities, but the only time that I could come up with where whispering was the best volume for everyone's learning was during silent reading time.  I guess "almost-silent" reading time would be more appropriate!

Looking at these new guidelines for class volume, it seemed to me that they were more natural for human beings!  When someone else talks, everyone should listen.  When the majority of people are concentrating silently, everyone else should respect the quiet environment by talking as quietly as possible.  Most importantly, when we are learning, we should be talking!

Now, when designing learning activities, rather than thinking about the best volume, I invest time thinking about how to elicit the best talk.  Evoking great questions.  Involving the learners in thoughtful discussions.  The one doing the most talking is doing the most learning!

Magical mastery!

As I watch my own kids go through the cycle of a six-week grading period, I notice a definite pattern in their grades.

The first few weeks typically show wildly different grades because only a few are taken.  Then around the middle of the grading period, the normal grades begin to appear.  Around the fifth week out of six, the "important" grades hit the grade books and grades are lower than hoped for.  As the end of the grading period quickly approaches, parents worry, kids panic, and teachers work to help kids pass.

Then the last grades are entered and lots of folks go from panicked to relieved!

This pattern of grades seems to be quite repetitive.  I would bet a dollar that the lowest overall grade average in any high school course happens approximately one week before the end of the grading period.  I'd bet another dollar that the highest overall grade average happens at the end of the grading period!

Extra work is definitely done, and kids probably do all sorts of things to "repair" their grades, but is there really a magical change in mastery of the curriculum that happens during that last week?  Or, perhaps as a dedicated and passionate group of educators, we can find ways to ensure that the activities our students do each day are truly about the learning and not about the grade!

Who has the answers? Who has the questions?

In a typical classroom in the not so distant past, teachers asked all the questions and looked for good answers from the students.  As much as we tried to call on every student equally and fairly, the best answers were almost always provided by the students that felt school was easy.  Whether the question was a simple question with one answer, or the question was open-ended and thought-provoking, good answers usually came from the highest-achieving students.

In a classroom that values questions, good ones can be provided by any student!  A question isn't right or wrong.  A question asks everyone to think.  Asking students to ask questions doesn't require kids to search their data banks for a singular answer and it doesn't require them to formulate a response to an open-ended question.  It simply requires curiosity and wonder!

When we ask kids for questions instead of answers, we level the playing field for participation by all students and we raise the level of thinking required!

Same Question, Different Reaction

I was recently asked, "What would the people you work with say about you in your role as principal?"

The first thing that popped into my head, "They would say that I like to ask questions!"  Indeed, I do like to ask questions.  I like to hear about the rationale behind ideas.  I like to hear about the barriers that may be in the way.  I ask question to learn more about what is going on.

The challenge with some questions is that they mean different things to different people.  The easiest example is the question, "Why?"  For some people, this little three-letter word automatically flips the defensiveness switch.  If you are asking why, you must not trust me and my decisions and you think my words are not OK.

Within a solid relationship, this one usually does not cause a defensive reaction.  But it can.  For example, two strong, thoughtful, and energetic teachers I worked with for several years approached me with a question about team teaching.  They were very excited!  These two had been on the campus leadership team and had led several successful initiatives.  They were seen as true campus leaders and I felt like they knew I respected their work and their thoughts immensely.  They were very comfortable engaging in professional discourse and they had enjoyably indulged my why a thousand times!

They asked if their whole team could try a new arrangement for teaching and learning.  Just the thought of taking a risk and trying something different was awesome!  I loved the fact that they wanted to explore ways to improve what was happening for their students!  I listened to them explain the logistics for few minutes, then asked them about their rationale, "Why will this arrangement be better for your students?"

I had asked these two teachers the "Why" question many times in the past and they typically loved answering it because they confidently knew their business!  They didn't mind answering why!  These teachers, the ones that I felt like I had a great relationship with, had previously shown no problem with my why.

This time however, their faces changed a little, and they approached their response with a bit of hesitancy. As usual, they had some really good answers to the question, but they did not have their typical level of confidence, so their reaction to the question wasn't the same as usual.  No bright smiles this time. Rather than excitedly telling me about their plans, they hemmed and hawed a little bit.  They didn't like my why.  I am sure the fact that I had had not immediately approved caused a great deal of the difference in their reaction.

Knowing these two, they would have made it successful regardless of my question.  They usually did!  However this time, I left them with two outstanding questions to think about.

1. How will you ensure that you build relationships with every single child just as well as you usually do in a self-contained classroom?
2. How will you ensure that your lesson planning remains fully collaborative like it is now?

It didn't take too long for this group to approach me again with the same request, "Can we team teach?"

This time, I didn't even need to ask, "Why?"  I could tell that they had really thought out the the answers to that question.  When they presented their rationale, their reactions were quite the opposite of the first request.  They were excited and confident.  They had already thought through the why.  They had really done the thinking and talking to make sure that their plan would have the very best chance to work well!  Bright smiles and brilliant ideas abound!

My why didn't bother them this time!

In hindsight, knowing the talent and passion for doing great things of these two teachers and the entire team, I should have responded to their question with an immediate and emphatic, "Yes!"  Then I should have engaged in some other good questions to hear more about it.  Also looking back, I can say that they made their team better by working hard to build relationships and by using their collaborative strengths to plan for incredible instruction!

Modeling a growth mindset

The desire to win is a natural, normal human trait.  We all have it to some degree.  A friend of mine is ultra-competitive.  He cannot stand to lose.  He is a really nice guy and a very gracious loser when he doesn't win, but he hates losing.  We had a friendly neighborhood ping pong tournament a few weeks ago and he didn't win.  In fact, he got beat by an 11 year old and a 13 year old.  After the tournament, he challenged each of them to another match and won both.

I found it quite interesting that the younger boys won when it was tournament play, but lost when it was just a friendly match.  Likewise, it was interesting that my ultra-competitive friend lost when the pressure of the tournament was on, but won when it was just friendly.  Did the younger boys rise to the occasion?  Did the adult falter because he expected to beat the kids? 

Some folks are perfectly happy with only a tinge of competition.  They may enjoy playing a board game or some cards.  Other folks like to view everything as a competition.  Whether it is a simple game or a successful career, everything hinges on the question, "Who is better?"

I was outside watching some kids throw the football yesterday.  Back and forth, back and forth, the passes got longer and the catches more acrobatic.  A boy stood next to me and commented after each throw and catch, "I can throw it better than him....I can catch better than him...I am faster than him...I have better hands than him...I would've caught that one one-handed..."

The comments went on and on, yet this kid never jumped into the mix to prove himself.  I waited for him to jump in and have some fun but he never did.  After reading Mindset, by Dr. Carol Dweck, this got me thinking!

Really competitive people tend to notice a gap between their abilities and the abilities of those who perform better.  The internal conversation typically goes one of two ways.  Some of them ask themselves these questions:

1. What makes the other guys better?
2. What can I do to to close the gap between me and them?

Others simply say to themselves:

1. They are just more naturally talented than I am.
2. I just can't do it that well.

One set of people ask questions that drive improvement,  The other set makes statements that speak of limited abilities.  The questioners look for growth while the others speak of fixed abilities.  There is a certain amount of this mental structure that is innate, but according to Dr. Dweck, people are capable of learning to adapt to a growth mindset.

As an educator, do you see yourself making comparisons to those around you?  If so, how do you approach your observations?  Do you try to learn from those who inspire you?  Do you seek out continuous improvement?  When things go well, do you still look at how to improve for the next time?

Or, do you see folks around you who may do something a little bit better, then say, "I just can't do that."  Do you say the other teacher has better kids, or a better schedule.  Do you convince yourself that your practices are just fine, regardless of the greater successes shown by others?

Most educators profess to the ideal of being a lifelong learner.  If you are indeed a lifelong learner, how do you live it each day?  Do your students see you living with a growth mindset?  Do they hear you questioning your own efforts as you seek improvement?

Question #2

I love Daniel Pink's work!  The man knows motivation.  Not in a Zig Ziglar way, but in a way that can make a huge impact in classrooms.  Educators are always trying to find the keys to motivating kids.  A lot of time is spent discussing the students that are seemingly unmotivated to do the assigned work.  Sometimes, too many of these conversations demotivate the teacher.  This has me thinking about Question #2 from Pink.

Was I better today than I was yesterday?

Pink says each one of us should ask ourselves this question each night before our heads hit our pillows.  I'm going to try to remember this for awhile.  Of course, a meaningful answer to this question depends a lot on Question #1.  You can see his Two Question video here.

Labels

When I think back to some of the most memorable students I have had over the years, I wonder how my descriptions of them placed limits on what I expected from them???

"Little Johnny never had help with his homework and he couldn't sit still for more than 3 minutes."

"Little Mary takes care of her younger brother and sister every night while her parents work."

"Crazy Karl???  That boy is out of control!"

So often, teachers describe their students to each other like this.  These descriptions are not meant as insults to the children.  They are typically just used to describe the child's situation.  It was true that little Johnny didn't get any help with his homework, even though he could have used a little bit of assistance most nights.  It was true that Little Mary's parents worked nights so she was in charge of her siblings.  And Karl?  He was just a fun boy who was always more interested in playing and laughing than anything else!

Today, it is my mission to see the unlimited potential in each child.  Looking back, I wonder if I unconsciously changed what I expected from Johnny, Mary, and Karl because of the way I described them?  As educators, how do we see beyond the hurdles that every child encounters, even when they may not be able to do?

Isn't it our job as educators to help children shed those labels?

Patient or Proactive?

I have a goal!  It is a big one and I have several active processes in place to help me achieve this goal.  I continue to do what is within my circle of control in order to find success.  There are also some dynamics of this goal that involve other people.  So sometimes, the ball is not on my side of the court and the situation asks me to wait on things to progress naturally.

This is when the principle of patience comes into play.  I am extremely excited about achieving my goal!  Honestly, I can't wait!  I feel like a kid at 6am on Christmas morning!  But I must be patient!

Sometimes it takes time to get what you want.  When you really want something to happen, it always seems to take too much time.  So the question becomes, a matter of two principles.  Should I be patient or should I be proactive?  Should I wait or should I work?

Sometimes, patience is proactive!

No answers today!

I remember walking into my 5th grade classroom during January of my first year of teaching and getting bombarded with the usual questions from my kiddos.  They were typical school questions for a first year teacher.  I remember noticing that the kids actually knew the answers to most of them.  I guess they were asking me just to be sure they were right.  I also remember that my answers were typically one-worded responses, some spoken with an occasional pointed finger, "Yes....No....There!"

After one too many, I jokingly stated, "I'm not answering any more questions today!"

A few kids giggled and a few looked at me with a perplexed grin.  They all knew I was probably up to no good!  There was silence for about four seconds, then the questions continued, "Can I work on my project?"

I responded, "I don't know, can you?"

The next student, "What should I do next for my writing?"

My answer, "I don't know!  What should you do next for your writing?"

Both kids already knew the answers.  A few more interactions like this and the class took notice.  For me, with each question and answer, things got more fun!  I wondered if I could go all day in this manner!

"Come on, Mr. Shanks, you KNOW what I need to do next!  Just tell me"

I said, "Hmmmm....I don't know....I wonder who could tell you?"

I continued answering questions this way and made the HUGE realization that I had trained my class to ask me a million questions a day!  By answering them, I trained them to keep asking!  I didn't want to answer a million questions per day!  I really wanted a classroom where the kids knew how to find their answers without needing direct guidance from me.  During the last several months of the year, I changed the dynamics of the classroom immensely by changing my responses to their questions.  Throwing most of the questions back to them made our classroom a different place.

This process also unveiled the difference between the regular questions and the fun questions!  Mixed in with the requests to go to the bathroom and how to solve #4, were questions like, "Can dogs really count?"

These were the questions that were more fun!  At first, I turned those questions right back to the students as well.  However, I learned that without some level of guidance, 5th graders didn't always know where to begin the search for answers to these questions.  In today's world, most kids simply Google the question!  Not so, in 1994!

I believe fun questions like these deserve to be honored and respected.  These are the types of questions I want students to ask.  Questions like these lead kids to explore and learn.  More importantly, when questions like these are respected, kids learn that it is a good thing to ask questions that don't necessarily have easy answers!

When kids regularly ask the impossible, then strive to find an answer, we all win!