Author: Mike Muir

I'm an educator interested in collaborating with other educators on engaging all learners, proficiency-based learning, technology's role in learning, and leadership for school change.

Shared Visioning in Action

I recently started a new job: Policy Director of the Learning Through Technology Team (LTTT) at the Maine Department of Education. It’s essentially the state tech director position, and its largest responsibility is managing the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI – 1to1 in 7th & 8th statewide – since 2001! – and making it easy for districts to buy in at other grades), and supporting schools as they think about how technology can support learning.

I have a small (but awesome!) team of 7 colleagues that help make all this happen. If you follow this blog, you already know I’m a strong believer in “Leading Beside” which includes both shared leadership and working from a shared vision. So it won’t surprise you that one of the first things I did with my new team was set aside a morning for us to build a shared vision.

We used the same process that Bette Manchester introduced to districts at the very beginning of MLTI: To think of a preferred future for young people we care about (the Preferred Future), then think about about what students need to start doing today to get ready for that Preferred Future (the Vision for Learning), then think about what teachers, schools – and the Learning Through Technology Team – need to do today so students can do what they need to do (the Strategic Plan). (A process Bette would credit to Bruce Wellman’s work.)

Building a Preferred Future

We started by thinking about a young person we care deeply about. Then thought out into the future, beyond middle school, beyond high school, beyond college or job training or military, and then a few more years, until that person was getting settled in their jobs and, perhaps, their family.

And then we thought about three questions:

  • Where would we like them to be able to work?
  • Where would we like them to be able to live?
  • Where would we like for them to be able to learn?

Here’s what the team generated:

These charts represent the Team’s Preferred Future.

Identifying Our Shared Vision Vision for Learning

The next step was to think about these same students today. If the charts above represent our preferred future for these young people, what do they need to do today to get ready for it?

Here is what we generated:

So, these charts represent the Team’s Vision for Learning.

Creating Our Strategic Plan

So, if this is what we believe students need to start doing today to get ready for the Preferred Future, what do do we believe teachers need to do, so students can do what they need to? Our thoughts:

And then, what do we believe schools (principals, tech directors, district administration, etc.) need to do so teachers and students can do what they need to? The Team’s lists:

These charts represent what we hope teachers and schools might adopt as their strategic plan.

But they also lead us to think about our own work and responsibility for making our Vision for Learning a reality. What does the Learning Through Technology Team need to do to support the work of students, teachers, and schools?

Prioritizing

Accomplishing 3 pages of strategic steps is a daunting task! (Actually, self defeating! We need a little focus!) I gave each Team member 6 dots to place on the charts. The prompt was, “Which are the most important pieces for us to work on right now.” All of them are important, and should be tackled as some time, but we needed to identify where to start. Team members could distribute their dots in an way they wanted (all 6 on one item, or spread out across items, etc.), but they each only had the 6 dots.

You can see where they placed their dots above.

That translates into the following as the Learning Through Technology Team’s Strategic Plan for the coming year:

  • Collaborate with our Vendors/Partners to give life to our Vision
  • Foster Postive Collaboration with School Leaders
  • Know the Field – where are their successes and challenges?
  • Improve Communications (Organizations, Schools, Partners)
  • Capturing data / Evidence of Impact

Where We’ll Go Next

It’s not enough to capture a Vision on paper. It needs to be used as a filter and a compass.

In order to do that, we’ll have to polish our Vision for Learning into a shareable document (it’s a little too rough for sharing in this current form), and create a mission statement. Then we can put together a “Compass and Filter” document (that includes our vision, mission, and strategic plan goals). We will use it to help us decide how to prioritize and do our work, and help us decide which new opportunities to take on. We can also share it with the schools, organizations, and other partners we work with (or might start working with) to see where there is alignment between our work and theirs.

But I’ll save that for future blog posts…

Shared Leadership Teams – The Series

The multiple perspectives, the buy-in from diverse stakeholders, shared leadership teams are a powerful tool in your arsenal for making large-scale school change stick. Shared leadership teams focus on the strategic work of the school. They focus on school change and improvement. They are not simply an advisory group. They are the decision making body.

Shared Leadership Teams: What They Are and Aren’t

Schools already have lots of groups that they call leadership teams. But many of them are not what I would refer to as “shared leadership teams,” not in the sense we’re talking about here. I would probably call them “management teams.”

Schools frequently have teams that are used to help share information between building administration and teams or departments, or to decide how and when to transition between terms or trimesters, or how to handle lunch on days with special events, or how to schedule fundraisers from various groups, etc.

I am not implying that these management tasks are unimportant, because they are. Further, I believe they are best handled with teacher input and representation and not by administrative edict.

To me, however, management teams handle tasks related to the day to day running of the school.

Shared leadership teams focus on the strategic work of the school. They focus on school change and improvement.

Students learning with tablets

In Auburn, we call them “Design Teams” because of the design and planning nature of their task. Another district I work with calls them “Implementation Teams” because they will lead the implementation of their strategic initiatives (and their “design teams” serve a specific function in school construction projects). Other folks call them “Work Groups.” It doesn’t matter so much what they are called, as the work that they do.

Design teams assess where in the implementation process your educators are, identify timely next steps, assist in providing formative feedback to those educators, help troubleshoot and problem-solve the challenges of implementation, and facilitate the sharing of ideas. It’s roll-up-your-sleeves strategic work. It’s about assessing what needs to be done right now to help your initiative be successful. And it’s about collaboratively crafting the overarching systems and structures that will guide your project.

Leadership Teams

For example, when Auburn started their 1to1 iPads in primary grades initiative, the design team for that initiative met periodically to plan various aspects of the program, including: what grade level we should begin with (kindergarten); the original name of the initiative; how to handle a small exploration program in 5 classrooms to figure out how we wanted to move forward with the program; how to craft a small randomized control trial (research study) at the beginning of the project, to insure we were collecting and analyzing data on how we were doing. Later, the role of the team evolved to focus on both on-going support of teachers and the special needs of rolling out 1to1 tablets to a new grade level each year.

As stated previously, shared leadership teams are made up of diverse stake holders. The power comes from these diverse perspectives.

But they are not simply an advisory group. They are the decision making body.

And, as much as possible, decisions are made by working toward concensus. Not everyone has to agree, but, as much as possible, everyone should be able to live with a decision. And lots can be learned by asking (nicely) someone to clarify their dissenting point of view. I find that often they have some concern many of the rest of us haven’t thought about, but that we should consider and plan for.

Keep in mind that lots of perspectives and shared decision making does not mean letting folks do what ever they want (if that’s worrying you). If you are the administrator, you still help set the non-negotiables and parameters of a decision. As a member of the team, your perspective is one of those shared in the discussions.

So shared leadership teams are not advisory groups, management teams, nor information dissemination groups (even if these are important tasks that need to be addressed somehow within the school or district).

What shared leadership teams are is a driving force to do the following:

  • Work Out Details
  • Solve the Problems
  • Invent the Next Pieces
  • Systematic Change and Continuous Improvement

How to Avoid Unintentionally Sabotaging Your Shared Leadership Teams

So, if you are forming shared leadership teams for your initiative, you clearly want to reap the benefits that come from them: increased buy-in, soliciting stakeholder voice and choice, designing and planning strengthened by the power of multiple perspectives. And, if you are the one putting the leadership teams together, then you’re already a leader in your school or district (a little positional authority is usually needed to get them started).

So guess the most common cause of unintentional leadership team sabotage…

Shared Leadership

You are!

Yup. In my experience the most common source of sabotage are the people who put the team together in the first place. They never intend to. It just happens naturally.

How?

You are leaders. You have postitional authority. The stakeholders at the table are used to your leadership. Probably, most of them appreciate your leadership. So what do they do? They do what they’re used to. They defer to you. And suddenly you have one leader with 14 people around a table, not a shared leadership team with 15 stakeholders expressing their diverse perspectives.

How do you know if you are unintentionally sabotaging your shared leadership team?

Pay attention to what percent of the talk in the shared leadership team (not counting the facilitation, just the real talk – sharing and examining ideas, designing components, developing plans) is from you or other school leaders with positional authority. If the answer is more than 25%, you have tweaking to do. If it is more than 50%, you’re in trouble (and won’t reap the benefits of shared leadership). If it is more than 75%, you are a master saboteur and are totally undermining your intentions of having a shared leadership team? (Ok, said a little tongue in cheek, but you get my point.)

In truth, we (school leaders) are good at what we do. To not do what we are good at is hard! It’s counterintuitive! But, in this case, it is also counterproductive.

So, what can you do to avoid the unintentional sabotage?

You will have to shift your leadership hat from directing and sharing your wisdom, to facilitating and soliciting wisdom from others. These strategies might help when meeting with your shared leadership team:

Wait Time: Just like in the classroom, sometimes you just need to pose your question or prompt and wait. And wait. And wait. Try not to be the first one to offer ideas, suggestions, or opinions. Just look around the room expectantly, someone else will eventually break the silence. The more the group gets used to actually expressing their ideas, the shorter the wait will be. But even when your group is at that point, try not to be one of the first ones to talk.

Actively Solicit Others’ Ideas: Just waiting probably will not be enough. The team might need nudging. Turn to team members and say, “Betty, what do you think?” You need to do it in a gentle way. It can’t sound like you’re trying to put anyone on the spot. Maybe start with someone who has been quiet, but you know is likely to have a good idea. Maybe do a “round robin,” where each person shares an idea in turn. Maybe after a couple people have shared ideas, ask an especially silent person what they think. When you see someone has a facial expression that says they have an opinion, say, “Mark, you look like you have something to say…” Spend more time getting others to share their ideas, than you spend sharing yours.

Save Your List for Later: It is likely that everyone is waiting for you to speak. Don’t. The quickest way to allow others to not share their voice or perspective is for you to speak. Save your input for later. (You do get to share it, just not first – or second!) I know you already have your own ideas about what needs to be done, how it should be done, and what the next steps are (you are a leader, after all!). So, keep that list to yourself! For now. Save most of your speaking for facilitating and getting others to share their ideas and opinions. But do keep the list in your head or on paper. Wait for others to share those ideas. Cross them off as they come up (from others). After the discussion has gone on for a while, and lots of ideas are on the table, then you can cycle back to sharing ideas from your list that aren’t crossed off yet. Maybe share them just one at a time, with ideas coming from others in between.

Frame Your Ideas as Questions, not Suggestions: Folks know you have ideas. They probably generally like your ideas. They are used to using your ideas, and probably even are accustomed to deferring to your ideas. The way to not allow them to simply wait and take your ideas is to avoid framing your ideas as ideas or suggestions, but rather as questions, “What do you guys think if we were to…?” This way, you are still soliciting members’ ideas and opinions, but ideas and opinions about the ideas you share. It says you value and are actively seeking their input and voice.

Warning #1: You might be a little mad at me right now (maybe deep down inside – maybe just a little – admit it!). Why can’t you share your ideas? You have tons of experience working on initiatives, and with running schools and educational programs. Isn’t that experience valuable? At the very least, as a shared leadership team, shouldn’t you be participating as an equal partner in the team, and chime in just as everyone else should chime in?

The answer, of course, is “yes.”

But not right now. This post isn’t about you or your expertise. It’s about developing the capacity of a shared leadership team. Do you want to sit around a table of silent educators, where yours is the “only” voice? Or do you want to sit around a table with lively discussions, ideas flying, and good thinking being applied to the work? This post is about how you get the other stakeholders to stop being silent. Once they stop being quiet or hesitant to share their opinions and ideas, that’s when you get to start participating as a regular team member.

Warning #2: It will be painful at first. It doesn’t matter what you tell folks about how we will do this together and we are all leaders in this initiative and that this team was formed so we could get everyone’s perspective. It still violates the leadership paradigm they are used to. Folks will stare at you and wonder why you aren’t telling them what to do or what you’re thinking. In fact, the first couple suggestions that come from folks who aren’t used to shared leadership may even be delivered with a tone that sounds a little spiteful with an undertone of “This isn’t brain science! Why didn’t you say this already? Why am I having to say it?!” They might even treat you (for a while) like they don’t understand why you aren’t doing your job or why you’re just sitting there.

The good news is that once teachers, students, or other stake holders start sharing their ideas and see that those ideas are wanted and valued and even used(!), they will be much more willing to speak up. And at that point, not before, you can say (if you feel you need to), “That’s why I was just sitting there. To get you folks to start speaking up!”

Shared Leadership Teams: The Power of Diverse Perspectives

If many hands make light work, many minds make smart work.

Shared Leadership

Bette Manchester taught me long ago, at the beginning of MLTI, not only that leadership was everything, but that shared leadership teams performed better for an initiative than single leaders did.

Years later, I worked for a small, private, educational development organization. We created non-traditional schools for underachieving students in good sized cities. There were four of us. Two came from the business world and understood the business side of education and how to work with executive-level decision-makers in large districts. One was a former high school principal who had also worked in the corporate world as a VP for Education for a large, national cable company. He understood school leadership and administration, and community and business partnerships. And there was me. I understood pedagogy, student motivation, and professional development. And we were all Type-A personalities!

It made for the most interesting phone conversations (we lived all over the east coast and when we weren’t onsite at a school, collaobrated online and on the phone). My wife would come home from work to hear the tail end of one of my conference calls, grimace, and say when we were done, “Wow! That must have been hard!” I didn’t understand. The conversations were lively, but we weren’t arguing or disagreeing, really. We were strong personalities, passionate about shared work, critiquing an idea or plan from our own perspectives and areas of expertise. What made it not arguing was that we actually listened to each other, and revised our ideas and plans with our input from each other. We always ended up with a much stronger plan because it stood up to scrutiny from multiple perspectives.

Since then, whenever I’ve had an initiative or project to work on, I have started by putting together a shared leadership team (or convinced the folks I’m working with to put together a shared leadership team).

These teams are made up of a spectrum of shareholders: students, teachers, administrators, school committee members, parents, and community members. But you aren’t just looking for a diversity of positions, but also perspectives. And you don’t want all “yes-men” on the team, either. While you might not want too many active blockers, you certainly want some of the folks who are looking critically at the work and coming to the table with their “yes, but”s to be addressed.

Auburn's iPads in primary grades

As an example, when we started our first-in-the-nation 1to1 iPads in primary grades initiative, one of the first things we did was put together a “Design Team,” the folks who would design the initiative. In addition to getting input from teachers, the Design Team included the following: Superintendent, Asst. Superintendent, Curriculum Director, Tech Director, Multiple Pathways Director, Principal, Elementary Technology Coach, District Grant Writer, School Committee members, parents, and leaders from several related community and educational organizations, such as the Auburn Public Library, the Career Center, the Chamber Business/Education Committee, City Council, ETC, NEREL, and the Maine International Center for Digital Learning.

At least one of the Design Team members was not necessarily supporters. But her concerned position about how we were going to use iPads with young learners insured we were addressing those concerns early in the design process. Further, seeing how we going about designing the initiative in thoughtful ways alleviated many of her concerns. (In the end, she became a supporter of the program, even when she continues to be critical when we aren’t as good about living up to our high standards for the program as we might be.)

And a key learning from our using shared leadership teams? No one of us is as smart as all of us together. The secret is the power of diverse perspectives.

Reframing Professional Development (Again)

Professional Development is more than just workshops, readings, and online courses. So what is it? And why am I dissatisfied with PD being reduced to these usual components? I think I have rewritten (and rethought) this post more than any other. My earlier thinking is posted here, and here.

Why reframe it again now?

I think I finally figured out what it is that makes us (Auburn Schools) think differently about professional development.

It’s the proficiency piece.

Teacher and student

We aren’t interested in simply sharing techniques or information. We want changes in classroom practice.

I have collaborated with other districts and initiatives, and I hear frustrations about how much they have invested in professional development – how many sessions they have provided – and how it has resulted in very little change in practice.

I think it is because our thinking about professional development has been incomplete. Sometimes folks say that teachers are oppositional or unwilling to change, but I think it is that workshops are simply insufficient (and perhaps their role is misunderstood), even though they are a key component.

Over time, our understanding about what we need to pay attention to in terms of PD and support has expanded to include 3 overarching categories: clarity; support for foundational knowledge, and support for achieving proficiency.

Clarity

  • A Professional Learning Curriculum – If we have an initiative (technology integration, proficiency-based learning, math instruction, middle level practices, what ever it may be…), what do we want our educators to become good at? As with young learners, adult learners can excel when we are transparent about what we would like them to know and be able to do. What are the (clearly articulated) knowledge and skills we want our educators to become proficient in, and what scopes and sequences make sense?
  • A Professional Learning Progress Management System – How will we manage, acknowledge and certify adult learning (just as we should for student learning)? What system(s) will we use to help make the professional curriculum and pathways transparent, to certify teacher proficiencies as they move through their professional curriculum, and to record and manage their “certifications” (micro-credentialling, “badging,” Educate/Empower or other learning progress management systems)?
  • Answering “But What Does It Look Like?” – Simply stated, this is “models & examples”; a curated collection of possible documents, classroom visits, videos, photos, and articles, etc., to help teachers develop a sense of what an aspect of the strategy would look like in action. Teachers often have an intellectual understanding of what they are being asked to do, but not a practical understanding. These models and examples play a critical role in helping them move to the point of being able to try this new idea in their own classroom.

Support for Foundational Knowledge

  • “Same Page” Trainings – These are introductory workshops, getting teachers on the same page about a new set of concepts, skills, or strategies they will be working to implement. We used to think of teachers as leaving a workshop as proficient in the new skill. Now we think of these “same page” sessions as just the beginning. The real (professional) learning happens when they go back to their classrooms and try out the strategy (see the PD components in the next category).
  • Reusable Learning Objects – Instead of having to wait for a workshop, or for the Tech Integrator or Instructional Coach to visit her classroom, these how-to articles, lessons, short courses, videos, and other digital resources (aligned to our professional learning curriculum) are available to a teacher as she needs them.

Support for Achieving Proficiency

Lesson Invention
  • Lesson Invention and Tryouts – There is much to any new system that needs to be designed or invented (or at least adapted for our schools). The work teachers do to design, invent, prototype, refine, perfect, and share these systems and strategies is valuable professional learning for all of us. Even relatively simple ideas or strategies, if they are truly new to a teacher, require some level of “invention” for that educator to put them into action. Embedded in the idea of lesson invention and tryouts is the notion of continuous improvement, and the chance to try a skill in the classroom, reflect on how it went and how it could be done better, and then try it out again with the improvements (play-debrief-replay).
  • Coaching and Feedback – Keeping with the idea of continuous improvement, this includes the teacher working with any Technology Integrator, Instructional Coach, administrator, or peer, who models lessons or strategies, co-designs or plans with the teacher, observes, and/or provides formative feedback to support the teacher’s professional growth and ability to increase the level of fidelity with which they can implement the strategy.
  • Teacher Face-to-Face Time – Teachers need time to sit with other teachers working on the same initiatives to share experiences, ideas, and resources, as well as to ask questions and seek support. They need a chance to share things that they have tried that worked, and to seek assistance with those things they are still challenged by. And the notion of “face-to-face” can extend well beyond her school or district via the blogs and social networks the teacher builds and follows.
Teacher Face-to-Face Time

We don’t just see that there are 3 categories of professional learning, but we acknowledge that all three compliment each other and are needed. Teachers don’t get to proficiency without the foundational supports. To offer workshops without defining the desired broader professional learning at best leaves gaps in teachers’ learning and at worst becomes a collection of random workshops. To share a set of expectations with teachers (the professional curriculum) without providing training and supports is the irresponsible expectation that they can change practices without supports.

Successful changes in classroom practice come when there is clarity, as well as support for both building foundational understandings and growing to proficiency.

If your initiative isn’t progressing the way you would like, if you aren’t seeing the the classroom changes you’d like to see, I’d invite you to look at the strategies within the three categories. Is your initiative attending to each?

 

Progress on our Professional Learning Project

Like a lot of districts working on large initiatives, we're struggling with how we can provide all the professional development and support our staff needs and how to manage the professional learning. Much of that development and systems work for us (Auburn School Department) is now part of the Distributed PD Project (watch this overview of the project.)

The project is more about creating our professional learning systems, than it is about actual workshops, trainings, coaching, etc. The project started with looking at supporting teachers with technology integration (leveraging technology for learning), but we knew we needed a similar system for our around Customized Learning. Recent developments have increased Customized Learning as a priority, but we are continuing to put as much attention into the technology for learning piece – both as a subset of the Customized Learning work, but also to support the folks who are primarily interested in the technology professional learning.

We have just shared a draft professional curriculum grid for Technology for Learning and a draft professional curriculum grid for Customized Learning. Each is only a partial grid outlining the Measurement Topics and steps or learning progressions within each Strand. By partial, we mean incomplete, but we have shared them hoping that others will collaborate with us to complete them.

Also, we have started a heightened collaboration with Educate/Empower around this work and are collaborating more intensively with 3 other Maine districts who share the same needs. Working from a proficiency-based learning perspective, and recognizing the power of a transparent curriculum and easy access to resources and support, the project is, right now, focused on the following:

  • Creating a professional learning curriculum/continuum for transitioning to Customized Learning, including for leveraging technology for learning
  • Developing a micro-credentialing (badging) infrastructure for that curriculum (we have selected Educate/Empower for the platform)
  • Developing or collecting reusable learning objects (videos, online resources, online modules, etc.) aligned to our professional learning curriculum
  • Develop a system to recruit and certify a cross-district cohort of “certifiers,” who will review educators' evidence of proficiency in the professional learning

 

Organizing Early to Avoid Device Breakage and Misuse

We had an interesting experience last year, at Auburn Middle School, related to iPad breakage and misuse.

AMS has six teams (3 7th & 3 8th). Last June, when we collected the iPads, we found that some teams had quite high breakage and misuse rates, and some had quite low breakage and misuse rates.

And what we saw right away was that the low-rate teams had done some things that the high-rate teams had not:

  • Worked on classroom culture (code of collaboration, rules, procedures, mutual respect, etc. – in general, not  iPad specific) before distributing iPads
  • Had a shared vision for learning
  • Had clear expectations for students for iPad use (actively taught them and re-taught them when needed)
  • Had clear expectations of teachers to use the iPads in class regularly for meaningful (to the students) learning activities 
  • Were thoughtful about including motivation and engagement strategies when designing learning activities (including those that include the iPad)
  • Responded to misuse in measured ways that were geared more toward getting students on track for appropriate use than on punishment

This was a great reminder of the success strategies from the beginning of MLTI (the original page seems to be gone, but Deer Isle has reposted it). The state MLTI team uncovered these strategies from visiting schools across the state and finding patterns among successful and more challenged schools. AMS’s trend data was almost the same as the original MLTI discovery: do these things, have low breakage/misuse; don’t do these things and have high breakage/misuse.

It confirms the conclusion from more than a decade ago that breakage/misuse is primarily a function of leadership and teacher practice. 

I’m not dumping on or blaming folks who have that higher rate. I’m much more interested in all of us learning from these kinds of experiences, so we can help all schools implement the more productive strategies and be more successful.

 

On Transitioning – Not Jumping Straight from the Traditional to the New

In my experience, the biggest mistake we make with large scale school change, like with Customized Learning, is thinking that we should, or need to, make the change all at once.  One day we’re living in the old; the next we’re living in the new. Part of that mistake is thinking that the initiative is one monolithic thing (that can just be turned on or off!), rather than something made up of many interconnected parts; also, it is thinking we should do it all at once, rather than phasing in the work.

But another piece is misunderstanding the nature of transitioning from the traditional to the new.

Let me show you what I mean.

Put your hands on the table about 18 inches apart, edge of your hand touching the table and palms facing each other (like you are measuring some fish you caught!).

We're here now, and want to end up here.Your left hand is where we are today. A group of students are taught the content at the same time (regardless of the pace they are learning it). They all learn it the same way. They all take the assessment at the same time. Grades are F to A, based on that assessment. Learning and assessment are based more on activities than they are learning targets; based more on building foundational knowledge (recall) than they are about both foundational knowledge and putting that knowledge to use (both recall and complex reasoning).

Your right hand is where we want to end up.  Learning is the constant and time is the variable (pace is based on how fast the student learns the material – with lots of teacher nudging and coaching, of course). Everyone learns the same content, but they learn it in a way that works well for them. Assessments are taken when the student is ready. Scoring (grades) is 1 to 4 based on the learner’s level of proficiency with the learning target. The student doesn’t move on until they are proficient with the content and there are multiple ways a student might demonstrate that proficiency. Proficiency requires being able to put the knowledge to use, not simply recall the related foundation knowledge.

But notice, your hands aren’t touching.  They’re 18 inches apart. We think it will take us about 5 years to transition from where we are now (left hand) to where we want to be (right hand).

And here is where we misunderstand transitioning. 

We get frustrated with teachers, or think they are doing it wrong if they are still doing parts from the traditional system. 

Instead, we should be expecting a mix of the old and the new that is (more or less) proportionate to how far along with the transition we are.

Now tap your right hand about a third of the way from your left hand. This is where we would be about a third into the transition. The problem is that some will expect that change to look just like where we want to end up. But it’s only a third of the way there. In reality, we should expect it to look mostly like the transitional system and only a little like the new system. If we were two-thirds along the transition, we’d expect it to still look some like the traditional system, but more like the new system.

Student progress trackingFor example, let’s say we are talking about learning progress management, and we are about a third of the way along our transition from what we used to do to the new system we want (keeping in mind that “a third” is metaphorical, simply to make a point). We would expect that a teacher might be keeping track of which unit or chapter each student is in the text (maybe with charts on the wall), students take the chapter test when they are ready, and grades are recorded in the electronic grade book (e.g. PowerSchool). The traditional pieces are that “the curriculum” is the textbook, that the text (and teacher mini lessons, we presume) are the primary approach to learning, and students are earning traditional grades. The new parts include keeping track of where students are in their learning, and students have some flexibility of pace.  

But if we were 2/3rds along, we might expect that the teacher would be using an online learning progress management system (e.g. Educate/Empower) to make sure that both she and her students know the full curriculum and which learning targets they are currently working on, is keeping track of which learning targets each student has demonstrated proficiency on, and the teacher then translates that information into an A through F for the report card each quarter. The traditional pieces include the A to F grades, and report cards each grading period. The new pieces include the transparent curriculum, keeping track of proficiency of learning targets,  and “grades” based on proficiency, rather than performance on assignments and activities.

Notice, more traditional and a little new early in the transition and a little traditional and more new later in the transition.

The big idea here is that we shouldn’t expect what teachers are doing to look entirely like the new system until the new system is fully implemented.

Additionally, if we’re just starting a transition, it needs to be ok that most of what we are doing looks like the traditional system. And even when we’re pretty far along with the change, we need to remember that there will still be elements of the traditional mixed in with the new.

From a leadership perspective, our biggest job is supporting teachers through the initiative toward a high level of implementation. And a major component of that is having realistic expectations of those teachers, based on how far along with the transition they currently are.

 

Benefits of Attending Auburn’s Leveraging Learning iPad Institute

Auburn Schools (ME), an early adopter of 1to1 iPads in primary grades, hosts the annual Leveraging Learning Institute on the topic. Registration for the Nov 12-14 Institute opens at noon (ET) on August 21.

Dr. David Murphy, RSU 44 Superintendent (Bethel, ME), has sent a team to the Institute every year. In this video, he discusses both what his district has gotten from attending the Institute, and the benefits of sending a team of teachers, administrators, tech integrators, and technicians.

 

Registration is limited to 135, so be sure to register early. Districts are encouraged to send teams, and the Institute is structured to support teamwork (but individuals are welcome, too!).

This year, we are expecting the Institute to be internationally rich! More than a third of our participants are likely to be educators from outside the United States. What a great opportunity to share your experiences and learn from educators from across the country and around the world!

Learn more by visiting the Leveraging Learning Hold the Date Page.  We hope to see you at the Institute!

 

The (New) Evolving Face of Professional Development

We’ve been thinking a lot lately about professional development. 

We’re working on a comprehensive project to define a professional learning curriculum related to our strategic initiatives (Customized Learning, Tech for Learning, etc), build modules and professional learning playlists around those learning targets, and provide a system for certifying teachers for their accomplishments and for what they know and can do. And I have written before about how our thinking about professional development has evolved over time.

This post captures our current (Summer 2014) thinking on the topic.

Not only are we recognizing that we just don’t have enough resources and opportunities to do traditional “everyone in the same room” professional development, but we have started thinking differently about the purpose of those workshops and other whole-group PD.

Until recently, I used to think of whole-group PD as the end. Teachers attend the PD session and they would leave being proficient at the skill taught in the session, ready and able to implement it well in their classroom.

Now, I think of whole-group PD as just the beginning, an opportunity to introduce a group to a new idea and get them all “on the same page” before they begin working in their own classrooms at learning how to implement the skill well. This is especially important given that the work we’ve been doing lately around Customized Learning, including teaching with iPads, is new to teachers (they haven’t experienced this themselves as learners) and have to invent many of the pieces. 

And that idea, the idea that these new skills are complex, and need inventing and development, and later need practice, and that teachers need to be supported throughout their work to get good at them, has us thinking about workshops as just one small piece of professional development.

For us, professional development for our teachers needs to include some fluid combination of these components:

  • “Same Page” Trainings – These are introductory workshops, getting teachers on the same page about a new set of concepts, skills, or strategies they will be working to implement.
  • Lesson Invention & Tryouts – There is much to this new system that needs to be designed or invented (or at least adapted for our schools). The work teachers do to design, invent, prototype, refine, perfect, and share these systems and strategies is valuable professional learning for all of us. Embedded in this idea is the notion of continuous improvement, and the chance to try a skill in the classroom, reflect on how it went and how it could be done better, and then try it out again with the improvements (play-debrief-replay).
  • Coaching & Feedback – Keeping with the idea of continuous improvement, this includes any Technology Integrator, Instructional Coach, administrator, or peer who models lessons or strategies, co-designs or plans with the teacher, observes, and/or provides formative feedback to support the teacher’s professional growth.
  • Teacher Face-to-Face Time – Teachers need time to sit with other teachers to share experiences, ideas, and resources, as well as to ask questions and seek support. They need a chance to share things that they have tried that worked, and to seek assistance with those things they are still challenged by. And the notion of “face-to-face” can extend well beyond her school or district via the blogs and social networks the teacher builds and follows.
  • On-Demand Modules & Play Lists – Instead of having to wait for a workshop, or for the Tech Integrator or Instructional Coach to visit her classroom, these how-to articles, lessons, short courses, videos, and other digital resources are available to a teacher as she needs them.
  • Answering “But What Does It Look Like?” – Simply stated, this is models & examples: a curated collection of possible classroom visits, videos, photos, and articles, etc., to help teachers develop a sense of what an aspect of the initiative would look like in action. Teachers often have an intellectual understanding of what they are being asked to do, but not a practical understanding.  These models and examples play a critical role in helping them move to the point of being able to try this new idea in their own classroom.
 
Of course, now we have to figure out how to do all of these well…. 
  

Teaching with Engaging Tasks

Engaging Tasks are an easy-to-implement, real world learning strategy that, when implemented well, many students find very motivating.  An Engaging Task tells a little story (only a paragraph or so!) that gives the students a reason for doing the work.

We Don’t Want Just Any PD, and Badges Are More Than Patches

We’re working on a project to get more professional development to more teachers as they need it. Two pieces that we mention frequently are reusable learning objects (including online modules) and digital badges. We do that, in part, because they may be the most interesting aspects, especially when trying to spark other educator’s interest and entice them to join us in the effort.

The Distributed PD Project is so much more than just those two components. But if you’d mostly been involved in brief conversations about the project, you might not think so. So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when colleagues say to me, “We found lots of resources that have badges. Why don’t we just use those?” Or, “Why don’t we just suProfessional Learningbscribe to this service? There are lots of PD modules, and it has badges.”

Now, I know they are well intentioned (these are good people, I like working with), and just trying to help (why reinvent the wheel, right?).

But the suggestions totally miss the point of what we’re trying to achieve with the project.

My first question to them probably should have been, “What are your criteria for selecting these resources?” In all fairness, although familiar with the type of resources, I haven’t spent real time looking at these specific ones, and I haven’t asked my colleagues this question. But I suspect that their answer would be, “They have lots of PD resources that our teachers would like or find useful, and they have badges.” And I’m sure there would be at least some resources there helpful to us and our work. 

But our goal is not simply to provide a buffet of PD, nor is it to simply have a badge at the end. 

In fact there are three key ways that these resource suggestions misunderstand our work. There are three key, distinguishing criteria we should apply to any resources or services we select to support this project.

1) We don’t want just any PD. We want targeted training aimed at supporting teachers as they work to implement our strategic initiatives (Customized Learning, Tech for Learning, etc.). We’re building out that professional learning curriculum so that we can be transparent about what we would like teachers to know and be able to do. 

10 Tech Integration Professional Curriculum BucketsSo one criterion we’d want is for a high level of alignment between the training modules and the knowledge and skills needed for our initiatives. A question I could ask about the suggested products is, “How does the list of available modules match our professional learning curriculum?” Keep in mind that a subscription service might not meet that criterion, but still have tons of high quality modules, just not the ones that we really need. And that is ok. We are quite happy to build out our own modules and playlists of available reusable learning objects. But those will be targeted directly to our professional learning curriculum.

2) We aren’t looking for badges that show that an educator participated in a training. We’re looking for badges that indicate that the educator is proficient with the professional learning target. If the training module were for something like standards-based grading, for example, we would want the teacher to earn the badge when she demonstrates that she is skilled at analyzing student work for how it demonstrated proficiency, is skilled at providing standards-based feedback to students, and is skilled at rating a student’s level of proficiency in that learning target based on evidence from the student’s work. We are not looking for the badge to be awarded when the educator participated in the training.

So a second criterion we’d want is for badges to be awarded only when a teacher can show that she is skilled at or understands a particular professional learning target. A question I could ask about the suggested products is, “Are badges awarded for demonstrated proficiency?” This is why, in some ways, the professional learning curriculum and having a cohort of qualified certifiers to examine the teacher’s evidence and determine when she has earned a badge may be more important than finding good training materials.

3) We don’t want badges just so we have an icon to show that we did something. The image or patch of the earned badge OpenBadgesmay be the least important aspect. As I mentioned in notes from a forum on digital badges, badging is about credentialling. It’s about recognition, knowing something about someone in a verified way (evidence-based way), and represents an individual’s skills and achievements. Badges travel with the individual (do not reside solely within a single platform or system) and can come from a variety of sources – a badge needs transportability and interoperability. As such, badges need a standard. Such a standard supports their use by the folks who issue them, the folks who earn them, and the folks who are interested in which badges you have.

So a third criterion is that the badges meet the badging standard. OpenBadges.org provides that standard. A question I could ask about the suggested products is, “Is the badging OpenBadges compliant?“

So, what we’re looking for are professional learning resources that meet some specific criteria: 

  • They are highly aligned with our professional curriculum and strategic initiatives
  • They offer acknowledgement only upon demonstrated proficiency
  • They are OpenBadges compliant (if they use badges)

 

Not All at Once – Phases of Implementing Technology for Learning

Technology is new to many teachers, and leveraging technology for learning is new to even more. Supporting teachers in things they haven’t experienced as learners themselves is complex, paradigm shifting work involving many components. Breaking your initiative into phases makes the change manageable.

When working to implement complex initiatives (like technology integration, or Customized Learning), we want to support our educators by not dropping it  on them all at once.  Toward that end, we try to define a productive sequence or set of phases of implementation.

As part of the Distributed PD Project, a Auburn-and-friends work group developed a wpid-Photo-Jan-24-2014-601-PM.jpgdraft Phases of Tech integration document. It is a draft, but we want to live with it and use it for a while before working to revise and update it. (Practice provides better feedback for revision than theory!)

We wanted to think about developing teachers’ skills at leveraging iPads for teaching and learning beyond just googling topics and word processing. Beyond just projecting material. Beyond just thinking about getting good at various tools. Beyond just using apps connected to the curriculum.

We wanted to think about technology as a tool to help us customize learning. We wanted to focus more on pedagogical goals than technological goals. And we wanted to think about where technology could take us that we couldn’t easily go without technology.

So we set up our professional learning continuum, our phases of implementing technology integration, to be similar to our Phases of Implementing Customized Learning, and how such a structure helps support plementation and teachers. (Driver 1)

And we based it on our current thinking about powerful uses of technology for learning.(Driver 2)

And we tried to think about how the SAMR Model might inform our work. (Driver 3)

Notes from Open Badge Forum

One aspect of our Distributed PD Project is credentialing: thinking about how we might acknowledge what teachers know and can do and giving them “credit” for the new things they are learning. One way we’re looking to do this is through digital badges.

On April 30, 2014, I attended Open Badges: Re-imagining Credentials for the Digital Age at the University of Southern Maine. The session featured Erin Knight, the Executive Director of the Badge Alliance.

Below are my notes from that session (Apologies if they seem cryptic.  I just copied them here and didn’t enhance or clarify them much…).

GENERAL NOTES:

  • It’s about recognition
  • Knowing something about someone in a verified way (evidence-based way)
  • Represents skills and achievements
  • One can unlock the way to the next one
  • Also about the information that is now available on the “back” of the badge
  • Also design (social) badges to drive the behaviors we desire

QUESTIONS ASKED and ANSWERED:

  • Are the commercial providers (Blackboald, moodel, etc.) building their badges in such a way that folks can use them in other platforms/ecosystems?
    • Some yes, others no.
  • Why badges?
    • Capture a complete learning path
    • Signal that learning to key stakeholders
    • Build and communicate reputation and identity (data about learning for the learner)
    • Build maps of learning pathways and opportunities for more learning
    • Foster an ecosystem where learning is connected across contexts, across lifetimes
  • How badges?
    • What does it mean to work at an ecosystem level (not just our org but learners can earn badges across many organizations and experiences)****
    • Software – e.g. open badges backpack
    • Open badges standard – for info, but also for structure so the info is accessible and examinable
    • Validation –
      • the badge has a lot of info;
      • next level is “Endorsements” which is outside people who review the standards and work and then endorse the badge;
      • Usage – how is it being used in the market (if 10 poeple got the badge and the employers like those employees, that says something about the badges)
  • Currency – you need both the assurance of value and the acceptance by society

RESOURCES:

INTERESTING IDEAS:

  • Think of the large badges as “Paths” (code school or P2PU). Or would this be the Phases of Implementation?
  • DePaul U is accepting badges in the application process
  • This is an evidence based credentialling system
  • Can be used in a “granular” and “stackable” way
  • Works through working groups
  • Defining the skills and the outcomes of those schools
  • Levels of badges: participation, skill, achievement/certification
  • Making badges for what’s meaningful for you, not just every badge you can
  • Backpack Federation allows badges to be stored many different places but still findable
  • The learner owns the badges (eg, they can make choose which badges they would like to keep and which they would like to get rid of)

NEXT STEPS:

  • What does the ecosystem idea tell us about how we define our system? The ecosystem ideas means that teachers should be able to earn their badges anywhere… Does that mean that we should define our medium and large badge requirements generically and point to our own badges that might fulfil that requirement???

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Reimagining credentials for a transformed culture of learning.

http://erinknight.com

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Wednesday, April 30, 2014, 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
Location:
215 Abromson Center, USM Portland Campus
CTEL Speaker Series

Guest Speaker: Erin Knight, Executive Director, Badge Alliance
Lives in Portland, Colby grad

Open Badges are a new way to think about recognizing and connecting learning and skill development. Digital, information-based, and stackable badges are becoming a new currency for skills, identity, and jobs. In this presentation, Erin Knight, Executive Director of Badge Alliance, will explore the state of the work so far, with examples of where badging is being successfully used across the ecosystem, as well as opportunities for higher education institutions to leverage badging within their own systems for their own benefit.

https://usm.maine.edu/ctel/badge-alliance

We’re Looking for a Wonderful Middle School Principal

Auburn Middle School

Are you looking to be the school leader of a terrific middle school, with a strong staff, who are working to implement innovative work around developmental responsiveness (see here and here), teaching and learning with technology, and customized learning? Would you like to be part of such a school that didn’t stand alone in its work, but was in a district doing strong innovative work in the same areas, and with strong, supportive leadership at the top? Do you know of another educator who would be interested in such a position?

Then please check out the Auburn Middle School Principal job posting on School Spring (use 809452 as the Job ID).

But move quickly. We are already reviewing applicants and hope to start interviewing soon.

Frankly, we’d love to find another team member, who is enthusiastic about driving and leading meaningful school change through shared leadership, might have some experience in one or more of our three innovation areas and could come up to speed on the others quickly (they aren’t trivial initiatives!), and is just plain fun to work with!

Did I mention that you’d get to work with an innovative district, making exciting progress on implementing innovative programs to help all children learn at their peak, a district that actively supports and empowers its educators in their professional learning, leadership, and educational entrepreneurship?

Learn more about Auburn Middle School or Auburn School Department. And don’t hesitate to contact me, if you have questions about the position, the school, our work, or the district.

Please share this post with your network and help us find a terrific principal for our innovative school!

 

 

10 Professional Learning Curriculum Buckets for Teaching and Learning with Tech

(Note: This is cross posted at the Distributed PD Project, where Auburn School Department, and friends, are rethinking how we can provide training and support to teachers.)

As we think about our teachers becoming highly skilled at teaching and learning with iPads, we could certainly generate a very long list of skills, approaches, tools, apps, strategies, and other competences we'd like them to get good at.

But if we consider how we might group that very long list into categories, I think we have 10 buckets that would make up our professional learning curriculum.

10 Curric Buckets

Three of those buckets focus on teachers' being able to use the technology themselves and create the conditions in the classroom for students to use the technology for learning.

  1. Personal Use: Can teachers use the device themselves as their own productivity and learning tool?
  2. Classroom Management for Tech: How can teachers insure that students are focused and on-task when using technology in the classroom?
  3. Managing the Tech: How do teachers organize the technology (or collaborate with students to organize the technology) so it works and is available to be used for learning in the classroom?

And 7 of those buckets are the pedagogical approaches that make up the 7 Powerful Uses of Technology (notice that they focus on educational goals, not technology tools):

  1. Tech for Foundational Knowledge: How can we help students learn the basics?
  2. Tech for Using Knowledge: How can we contextualize learning and make learning engaging and meaningful? How can students use their knowledge? What is the role for creating and creativity, and for project-based learning?
  3. Tech for Learning Progress Management: How do we keep track of student learning? Promote a transparent curriculum? Make learning progressions clear? Help students navigate their learning? Maintain evidence of mastery?
  4. Tech for Personalizing Learning: How does technology help us tailor the learning to the student?
  5. Tech for Supporting Independent Learning: How can technology help the student do more on their own and need the teacher less?
  6. Tech for Assessment: How can technology help us capture what students know and can do?
  7. Tech for Home/School Connection: How can technology help us stay better connected to parents?

 

Is Research on Cursive and the Brain Enough?

Ok. There are clearly better ways to spend a Sunday morning…

But I came across this article about what research says learning cursive does to your brain.

As I am sure is happening in many districts, some parents, community members, and School Committee members have raised the issue of how much emphasis they believe we should be placing on handwriting, especially cursive.

Others will undoubtedly find this article, and it will certainly become part of our handwriting/cursive conversation.

I'm especially concerned because our handwriting conversations seem to have an undercurrent of, at best, iPads interfere with the teaching of handwriting, and, at worst, we shouldn't have primary grades iPads because they interfere with the teaching of handwriting, conclusions that I'm not sure are valid, even if iPads may draw attention to a larger issue.

The article points to improved “efficiency thinking” and “fine motor control” when teaching cursive, over print or keyboarding. The article does not make the argument that “therefore cursive should continue to be emphasized in school,” but this article is likely to be used to make that argument.

I want to be clear. I am not concerned about this article or the research-based conclusions it shares. I am concerned about the inappropriate ways others might try to use this article to further arguments/conclusions that cannot actually be drawn from this article (in fairness, I think it would happen from a place of naïveté, not duplicitiy).

So, although the research in this article seems valid and reliable and the conclusions it shares seem appropriate, I believe using the results from this article to further an argument that we should continue teaching cursive is invalid. There are significant issues with using the article in this way.

Fallacy 1: The Rubiks Cube Curriculum
The biggest issue is that the demonstrated benefits have nothing to do with the purpose of cursive or handwriting. There is nothing here about improving the quality or efficiency of (written) communication, just of certain kinds of thinking.

That is akin to suggesting we teach chess because it improves logical thinking. Even the argument that we should teach geometric proofs to build logical thinking has lost traction in favor of teaching logical thinking in authentic, not contrived (even if traditional and conventional) contexts. At other times, I have referred to this as the “Rubiks Cube Curriculum” – placing curricular focus and value on something of little practical value in order to garner some theoretical gain in some abstract cognitive ability, even though early psychological research shows there is little to no transfer of those abilities to real world application when taught that way (out of context).

The very next question that should arise from this research is, “Are there other, more authentic ways to efficiently develop efficiency thinking or fine motor control in students?” The question after that should be, “Is there a significant difference, in any practical way, not just statistically, in these two 'benefit areas' using cursive over print or keyboarding?”

Only if the answer is “no” to the first and “yes” to the second should we start having the conversation about if cursive should be the vehicle we use to develop those skills. The article does not raise these questions (And frankly, it may not be their responsibility to do so. But it is of anyone trying to use the article to say anything beyond what the article actually says.).

Fallacy 2: The Importance of Teaching Both Cursive and Print
The next problem with how some might try to leverage this article is to point to the “importance of teaching both print and cursive over keyboarding” (or even arguing we need to teach all three). Why not choose only one form of handwriting, print or cursive? It is true that schools traditionally teach print in the primary grades and then introduce cursive a couple years later. But other schools teach only cursive, starting in the primary grades. No research findings on this issue are presented in the article (again, recognizing that it is likely legitimately beyond the scope of this article).

Fallacy 3: The False Dichotomy
The third issue is that a misinterpretation of the conclusions in the article could be used to set up a false “dichotomy” (trichotomy?). The potential argument leveraging these results to say “cursive over keyboarding” (or even cursive over handwriting) assumes that we are only going to pick one. In truth, people in our society need to develop a practical level of proficiency in written communication, both “electronic” and “manual.” There is no research here about “blended” environments, learning both keyboarding and handwriting…

Fallacy 4: Handwriting Passes the Straight-Face Test on Return On Investment
The fourth issue is the assumption that schools have an infinite amount of instructional time and can teach everything anyone in the community (parents, businesses, community groups, seniors, other community members) believe students ought to learn (or even just believe “it would be good for them to know”)…

In truth, state curricular mandates have never been larger or more demanding (and cursive is not even part of the Common Core Curriculum for Language Arts!).

Schools have to examine every potential topic someone thinks we should teach from the perspective of return on investment, bang for the buck. So, requests for teaching content need to be weighed against how much time they take to teach well, and the practical value of developing such knowledge or skills in students, COMPARED TO ALL OTHER REQUESTS/DEMANDS. We have to be selective and deliberate in choosing where we put our energies. It is our responsibilty to be choosy and discriminating in what we choose to teach. (I feel the same way when businesses seem to be asking to shift their responsibility for job training onto public schools…)

I'm not even sure that advocates for an emphasis on teaching handwriting have looked at how much of modern written communication is hand written vs electronic. Clearly, the proportion of hand written to electronic written communication has shifted enormously, even since most of the parents of our current students were themselves students…

The real question should be, “How good do people today need to be at handwriting in order to do the amount of handwritten written communication needed today (and therefore, how much time and emphasis should schools put on it – what's 'good enough')?” The arguments about how nice it is to receive a handwritten (cursive) letter just have no real bearing when return-on-investment is considered (unless, perhaps, if we are discussing moving cursive to the Fine Arts curriculum).

I'm not sure that handwriting passes the straight face test on return on investment. Regardless, this article presents no such analysis (not the authors' job, but certainly the responsibility of anyone using the article to argue for the teaching of cursive).

Final Thoughts

And I won't get into questions around what are the best (not simply traditional) methods, approaches, and strategies for young people to develop proficiency in handwritten or electronic writing.

And I won't get into questions about why we are spending so much time debating the mechanical “drawing” of letters and words, rather than debating how to help young people use those words to express, inform, create, and persuade.

So, this article presents some interesting (research based) conclusions about the teaching of handwriting and cursive. But it is important to remember (and I'm sure the authors would echo this thought) that the only conclusions that can be drawn from this article are the specific conclusions this article shares.

In response to folks who share this article as evidence we should continue (or return to) our emphasis on teaching cursive, our questions should include the following:

  • If we believe schools are responsible for teaching efficiency thinking, what are the best evidence-based ways to do so?
  • What are the best evidence-based ways to develop fine motor control?
  • What is the research on the impact of learning handwriting on the development of effective communication skills?
  • What form of handwriting should we teach? What are the criteria for deciding?
  • To what level of proficiency should we develop handwriting? What's good enough?

 

Does Technology Improve Learning – No! A Keynote

I recently had the honor of keynoting at the Illinois Computing Educators (ICE) conference.

My message was that technology alone will not improve learning; only teachers improve learning. But technology can be wonderful tool for teachers and for students under the guidance of teachers.

Watch the keynote here. And related resources are down below.

 

If we want to leverage technology well for learning, then these are the components we should attention to:

  • Focus on Learning
  • Deliberate, Shared Leadership
  • Community Engagement
  • How You REALLY Protect Stuff
  • Support the Heck Out of Folks

Resources

Technology:

Learning:

Leadership:

Community Engagement:

Supporting Educators (Professional Development):

 

A Child Struggles in School: Where Does the Problem Lie?

In a conversation recently with a caring, conscientious teacher, she commented that she had success working with struggling learners and helping to make them feel smart.

But when they got to the next grade and perhaps had a teacher that wasn't as effective at reaching those children, or perhaps thought there was a pace for learning and students should stick to it, or perhaps simply saw the onus for learning as being on the student, the students really struggled again.

She worried that perhaps she had led those students to have an unrealistic view of themselves by not being more up front with them about being struggling learners. She wondered, despite her success helping those students to learn, to feel successful, and to feel smart, if she shouldn't be more direct with them about being struggling learners, to prepare them for possible pain and disappointment later.

And I caught myself wondering, is the problem that each child isn't where the school is in the curriculum?

Or is the problem that the school isn't where the child is in the curriculum?