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.

“Just in Time” Lessons: Tricks to Teaching Tech Quickly (2 of 4)

This is the second in a series of posts on teaching technology quickly so the focus of technology-based learning activities can be not on technology, but rather on the curriculum.

“Just in Time,” not “Just In Case”
The mistake the Health teacher from the recent post made wasn’t doing mini lessons before letting students start their project. Her mistake was doing too many mini lessons. Teachers, often simply because they want students to succeed, try to show students everything they might need in order to complete a project.

The problem with this approach to education, according to Roger Schank (1995 – print book or hyperbook), is that it gives students information they might need before they perceive they need it, or answers questions students don’t have yet. This is “Just in Case” education. We teach students knowledge and skills just in case they will need it later. The problem is that because students don’t yet perceive they need it, it doesn’t get filed effectively in student memory and we end up re-teaching it later.

“Just in Time” education is either teaching knowledge and skills when students recognize they need them, or working to create a sense of need or to generate interest before teaching them. In terms of technology mini lessons, it means identifying the 3 to 5 skills students need right away to get started on the project, and doing other mini lessons only as the need arises.

For the Health public service announcements, it would mean teaching how to import video clips, how to build the video by sequencing the clips, and how to crop and edit clips. It would also mean not showing students how to put in titles or transitions or how to export their final project, because those are skills students will need near the end of their work, not when they are getting started. Those mini lessons might still be taught, but only days later, when and if students need them. Further, “Just in Time” education means that the teacher does not take time to teach those skills if students figure them out on their own. Although it might be a good idea to plan a minilesson because students might need it, that does not mean that it has to be taught.

 

Tricks to Teaching Technology Quickly: Mini Lessons (1 of 4)

Yesterday, I suggested that teachers sometimes make one of two mistakes when designing technology-based activities for students: either spending too much or too little time teaching the technology skills necessary for the activity.

I am not referring here to how teachers might use technology to help with their lecturing and direct instruction (although one friend reminded me that too much lecturing and “PowerPointlessness” are also mistakes teachers make when teaching with technology…).

Educators who read me often know that I'm not a big fan of spending too much time teaching about hardware or software, whether it is for professional development for teachers, or learning activities for students. I'd much rather see a lesson where the students, young or old, learned how to analyze data (and leave knowing also how to use a spreadsheet) than a lesson just on how to use the spreadsheet. But those kinds of lessons only work when you can figure out how to teach the technology quickly.

Below, is the first of four techniques that will help insure that teachers are helping students succeed with their work by teaching them the technology skills they need, but doing it quickly, so that most of the time could be spent focusing on content from the curriculum.

Mini Lessons
Technology mini lessons are no different than mini lessons in any other discipline: a short lesson covering some specific skill or fact.

For a video project, they would include things like importing video from the camera, cropping video clips, sequencing them, and adding titles and transitions.

For making Web pages, they would include lessons such as adding graphics, making new pages, making links to your other pages, or making links to other Web sites.

For making brochures, the mini lessons might be changing the orientation of the paper, changing the margins, and setting up columns.

Ideally, each mini lesson is followed by a brief period when the students can apply what they have just learned before the next mini lesson is introduced.


The Two Mistakes Teachers Make When Teaching With Technology

Even though we may be working with “Digital Natives,” students do not necessarily have the technology skills to do the work we want them to do with their laptops and tablets. In an environment where the technology is in service to learning the curriculum, it is important that teaching those skills is done quickly so that most of the student’s time is spent on the content of the activity, not the technology itself.

But good, well-intentioned teachers often make two inadvertent mistakes when they start out teaching with technology…

I once observed a middle school Health Education teacher work with her students on a technology-based project. She is an excellent teacher who comes up with very creative ways to engage her students. She also used technology quite a bit herself and had terrific ideas of how to use computers with her students. Although she was an experienced teacher and knowledgeable about using computers, she was a novice at teaching with technology. She ended up making a critical mistake.

She was preparing to have her students make thirty-second public service announcements (PSAs) about different health issues and diseases. Students would use the desktop video software available on their laptops. I was there from the first lesson, when the teacher described the project to the students. Enthusiasm was high! These students were dying to create videos and they were anxious to get their hands on their computers. The teacher had carefully and thoughtfully prepared a series of skill-building sessions to prepare students to use the desktop video software.

But it took her three days to go through all the skill-building lessons.

By then, many students had lost interest in the project or were off task, and some were really disruptive.

The teacher’s mistake? She had put too much emphasis on the technology. She spent too much time teaching the technology skills.

Teachers new to teaching with technology generally make two mistakes when integrating technology into their teaching.

Spending Too Much Time Teaching the Technology
Spending too much time teaching the technology takes the focus off of the curricular goals originally intended for the technology-based activity. Or, worse, this destroys the intrinsic motivation students might have for a project when it is introduced. The Health Education teacher’s PSA project was like this. It turned out well, but she had to work to get their interest and motivation back. Teachers want students to know all the skills that they might need throughout the project, and don’t recognize that students probably only need a handful of skills to get started and can learn new skills as the need them, if they don’t figure them out on their own.

Not Teaching the Technology Skills
The other mistake is not teaching any technology skills at all. For example, a teacher might want students to create PowerPoint presentations or to make a multimedia project to show others what they had learned from the research they have done in class. But the teacher doesn’t show the students how to use the presentation or multimedia software and simply expects them to figure it out on their own. Sometimes this is because the teacher assumes the students already know how to use the programs, or because the teacher isn’t sure how to teach them herself. Sometimes it is because she is concerned about the time it will take and she knows she has a lot of curriculum to address.

If we are going to expect teachers to integrate technology into teaching (hopefully because we believe in the benefits to learning!), then we certainly don’t want teachers to leave students floundering with the technology. Students deserve to be given support and instruction in order to be successful with the task. By the same token, we want teachers to be able to focus most of their instructional and student learning time on their curriculum and not to shift the emphasis of their teaching to technology.

What, then, is that balance between supporting students with some technology instruction and not taking too much time so teachers and students can stay focused on the curriculum? Teachers must not only design engaging technology-based projects and activities for their content, but they must figure out how to teach the technology quickly.

Why We Must Embrace Disruptive Technology

There is more to Sustaining and Disruptive uses of educational technology than the opportunity to improve education and to reach more students. There are risks involved. But this isn't from embracing Disruptive uses, but rather from not embracing them. David Thornburg:

When kids who are that fluent with these tools encounter an educational system that is predominantly driven by the awesome power of a sheet of slate and a stick of chalk, then they're in trouble. Or the teacher is in trouble, more appropriately, because the student will just tune [the teacher] out and do this project at home. [He'll say,] “It's not worth my time to try it here, I don't have access to the resources. I'll just get through the day.”

In fact, the whole Sustaining/Disrupting idea comes from the world of business and the writings of Clayton Christensen, who “focuses on the critical distinction between sustaining technologies that enhance current trends in an industry and disruptive technologies – innovations that herald the wave of the future.” He argues that even well managed companies fail if they don't respond to innovation in a timely manner. It is adaptive organizations that survive and thrive in the presence of disruptive technologies. (See a summary here.)

That doesn't mean that it's easy. In fact it can generate a lot of fear. That's because Disruptive uses can fundamentally threaten well established practices. When graphing calculators first came out in the late 1980's, I bought one because I knew they represented great potential for teaching math. I showed it to a close friend, who was also a math teacher. Her first words were, “Wow! This is great!” But, without missing a beat, she went on to say, “I hope none of my students have one!”

David Thornburg had this to say about 1-to-1 computing, perhaps the biggest disruptive innovation facing schools in along time:

There's a realization that when you go below 4 to 1, as an educator, your world changes. I think that the teachers and administrators who are resistant to one-to-one computing definitely do understand the implications. These are very bright people. They know that the world of education as they know it will end. …

How can we help schools adapt to disruptive technologies? And more importantly, how can we take advantage of the “wave of the future” to improve schools and reach more students?

 

 

Do Something Different: Disruptive Technology

There are really two ways to use technology for teaching and learning. Johnson and Maddux refer to it as “Type I” and “Type II” (see here, for example). Alan November refers to it as “automation” and “infomation” (see here). Others refer to them as “sustaining” and “disruptive” (see here).

The bottom line is that Sustaining (Type I) approaches simply automate conventional practice – they support the ways teachers currently teach. Disruptive (Type II) uses are those that allow students and teachers to do things that they couldn't easily do before, or perhaps couldn't do at all. Business recognizes that although Sustaining uses of technology make work more efficient, there is only incremental improvement and benefits. It is with Disruptive uses of technology that real gains are to be made.

For example, the typewriter is Sustaining since it makes writing more efficient (it's neater, and with practice you can type faster than you can write). The word processor, however, is Disruptive because of the ease of revision. If you need to revise or edit a paper, there is little advantage to having a typewriter over having a pen and paper. In both cases, you have to start over with a new copy. With a word processor, you simply make your changes to the existing copy and print a new one. In fact, writing teachers have noticed that young writers no longer do separate, distinct drafts of a paper (1st draft, 2nd draft, etc.). Young writers now simply do a single rolling, evolving draft. They may print a new version (or submit a new electronic version in a drop box!) at certain points of their work, but each of these is not an end product of work on a specific draft, but rather a snapshot in time of the single evolving paper.

Other Sustaining examples include drill and practice software, student response systems (“clickers”), and SMARTboards. Each of these are more efficient ways of doing what teachers have done for a long time. But, since we aren't really changing what teachers have done – we aren't changing eduction – they won't mean that we will reach more students than we have in the past or that our schools will achieve anything they haven't done in the past. There's an old saying that if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten – even if you're doing it more efficiently.

Keep in mind that what matters most is how the technology is used, not which technology is used. For example, PowerPoint to create slides for a presentation is a Sustaining application, but students using PowerPoint to create multimedia documents to teach others about a topic they have been studying could be a Disruptive application. Using a graphing calculator in a math class with the traditional Algebra text is a Sustaining use, but using a graphing calculator for modeling real (messy) data and studying functions is a Disruptive use.

Other Disruptive examples of using technology in education include digital storytelling, WebQuests, or using blogs, wikis, and podcasts to build community and literacy. These uses have been shown to get students excited about learning, to learn basic skills, to use and develop higher order thinking skills, and to motivate hard to teach students. These tools have the ability to change education.

David Thornburg puts it this way:

All too often, we see teachers who are using technologies today trying to do the same kinds of things they did in the past, only more efficiently. I'm not going to go back to using a typewriter now that I use a word processor. But those are examples of what I'd call doing things differently–and the real power comes when you do different things.

Technology is expensive. I'm not sure it is worth that expense, if we are only going to use it to do what we have always done. But it could be well worth the cost if it brings productive changes in learning to our classrooms.

What is the change in learning you'd like to see in our schools?

 

Leveraging Learning: iPads in Primary Grades – Registration Opens Thursday!

Last November, Auburn successfully hosted their first Leveraging Learning Institute, focused on iPads in primary grades. We will be hosting the Institute again November 14-16, 2012. Sessions will appeal to those just starting and veteran implementers, as well as, those new to our conference and those who attended last year!

We expect the Institute to fill quickly, so please know that registration opens Thursday, 8/23 at noon (Eastern time).

Come gain insights into:

  • How to design and implement an iPad initiative to customize learning for students
  • Structuring professional development for continuous improvement
  • iPads for formative assessment, and special education, and as a creativity tool, and more!
  • Which apps should you use?
  • Leveraging data and supporting your initiative with thoughtful research
  • iPad and iOS management, and large-scale tech implementation
  • Managing apps and iPads in the classroom
  • and more!

Classroom visits will be available as optional pre- and post-conference sessions under separate registration (which also opens Thursday at noon!).

“The quality of this conference was extremely high. …the information was both pertinent and useable immediately.” Kevin Howe – Board Member – Lakeside Union School District – Lakeside, CA – LL2011 Attendee

We look forward to seeing you in November!

 

Keep the MLTI RFP Focused on Maine: Talking Points

As with other issues around the new MLTI RFP, I have had good exchanges with folks since I wrote about my worries about the new RFP having an option for other states to buy off of the terms of our contract. Some of you have asked what you might say to the Commissioner, if you wanted to express that you felt similarly.

Based on my experience working both in the private sector and the public sector, and on discussions with business people about this possibility, here are my talking points:

  • The possibility that the price would be lower because the vendor could sell more units is unlikely. A vendor is more likely to give an attractive price to a single showcase initiative.
  • Our RFP should be based on the changes in learning Maine would like to see. This doesn't apply to other states.
  • Even if other states are allowed to buy using our terms, the vendor has to do a separate contract with each state. The legal hassles of this mean that vendors will choose not to submit proposals to Maine.
  • If you take a second to imagine a vendor that you would like to see submit a proposal, there is a very good chance that they will not.
  • Please, make it clear in the RFP that submitted proposals will only apply to Maine.

 

Keep the MLTI RFP focused on Learning: Talking Points

I have had some great conversations and email exchanges with many of you since posting my concerns about keeping the new MLTI RFP focused on learning. Some of you have asked if you wanted to reach our to the Commissioner to express similar views, what might you say?

Here are my talking points:

  • Instead of tech specs, the RFP should describe what we would like to do with the devices (what is the change in learning that we would like to see?)
  • Technology is expensive, and we should not invest in it if we are simply going to use it to do what we do without it (what is the change in learning that we would like to see?)
  • Looking at the work in Maine, perhaps that change in learning should be Customized Learning and the Education Evolving recommendations
  • In keeping with the components of Customized Learning, the learning activities described should include both those for low level learning and for high level learning.
  • Low level activities (recall, understanding, simple application) could include the following: access to online resources, information gathering, note taking, communicating, studying, accessing online educational tools, etc.
  • High level activities (non-routine application, analysis, evaluation, creating) could include the following: creating simulations, project-based with multimedia, coding and programming, writing for a purpose and audience, digital storytelling, engineering and design, etc.

 

Tone of Voice Matters (In Surprising Ways)

In one of the schools I worked with a while ago, we were working hard to implement an engaging, project-based curriculum with hard-to-teach students, the hardest in the city. As with many hard-to-teach students, ours could be challenging. But where some of the teachers found that to be true, others seemed to have little problem with them.

I did a series of classroom observations to see if we could learn why. What could we learn about how different ways of interacting with students impact student behavior?

It became clear from the observations that there are generally three kinds of tone of voice teachers use with students and that the (hard-to-teach) student reaction to each was fairly predictable. My experience in classrooms since then has confirmed this pattern. Granted, easy-to-teach stidents will have much less reaction to tone of voice, but easy-to-teach students aren't who we're struggling to reach and trying to develop more success strategies for.

Disappointed Voice
It is no surprise that the classroom observations showed that teachers who used the “disappointed voice” (a tone that indicated that the teacher was disappointed, upset, or angry with the student) generated the most difficulty with students. Students who might have been calm and compliant would quickly become loud, defiant, and oppositional. Students who where already acting up generally became worse.

Interestingly, feeling angry (and perhaps showing it in your voice) is human nature when students act rudely or are persistently off task or disruptive. Wanting to subtly assert your authority is perfectly understandable. Grabbing an object a student won't put away seems a normal reaction. But actually doing any of these was totally counterproductive.

The disappointed voice did not necessarily happen only when students were off task or misbehaving; in at least one case, it had more to do with the teacher's natural tone of voice than it did with how the teacher was feeling. I was further surprised that some teachers were not aware that they were using the disappointed voice, showing how important it is that we be very conscientious, deliberate, and intentional about how we interact with students.

Teacher Voice
It was student reaction to “teacher voice” that surprised me the most. Teacher Voice is that voice that has just a little formality in it, or says I'm the teacher and you're the student. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with the teacher voice. Such a tone seems completely appropriate, and I doubt that any principal or colleague would even notice during an observation that a teacher was using it (it's that normal and natural).

But it certainly caused problems with our challenging students! Again, it drove them to act up and be confrontational.

I think, where many children simply hear an adult tone or a formal tone, many hard-to-teach students hear authoritarianism or standoffishness (even a little “I'm better than you”), attitudes that they seem to take as confrontational and aggressive. Teachers certainly didn't mean any of these and I suspect that the teacher voice is fine for easy-to-teach students and some underachievers, but these observation certainly suggest that teachers will be more successful with their hard-to-teach students if they avoid that formal tone. Rather than debate whether students are right or wrong in their reaction to the teacher voice, I think we have look from the perspective of what works and what does not.

People Voice
It was interesting to see (and perhaps no surprise) that the teachers who seemed to have the best rapport with hard-to-teach students talked with them as people – they used what I have come to call the “people voice” (as if they were just talking with another person – I think some teacher educators call it the adult voice). There was no positional authority in their voice. Emerick (1992) reported that teachers influential with underachievers were willing to communicate with the student as a peer. That was certainly confirmed during these classroom observations.

The teachers who used the people voice still drew the line with behavior, set expectations, and intervened when students weren't doing what they were supposed to. In other words, even though they didn't wield their authority through in their voice in general, these teachers still used their authority when appropriate and necessary.

Ironically, in the past, I was a middle school teacher and had very good luck connecting with my students. But later I was moved to the high school and had a really horrible year before moving to the university to work with preservice teachers. I realize now that I had used the people voice with my middle school students and the teacher voice with my high school students. In light of these much more recent classroom observations, I can't help but wonder if using the teacher voice had had something to do with the quality of my year…

Tone of Voice Matters
Some of these differences in teacher behavior can be explained as stylistic differences. For example, some teachers relate more informally with students while others are more formal, and some teachers are more straightforward about their content, while other teachers work to make it more fun.

Although various behaviors, approaches, or reactions are natural, logical, understandable, or one's personal style, they can still be nonproductive or counterproductive. Much of this blog is about teachers being strategic, deliberate, and intentional in using productive behaviors, approaches, and reactions, even over those that are natural or otherwise “appropriate” but less effective. Teacher behaviors and approaches have to not just be “ok,” they have to work.

Clearly challenging students are very sensitive to the teacher's tone of voice, and teachers should avoid both the disappointed voice and the teacher voice in favor of the people voice. It would appear that using the people voice is a much more effective way of dealing with hard-to-teach and underachieving students

 

It’s Not About Blaming Teachers, It’s About Locus of Control

I keep writing about, and presenting about, how teachers need to teach differently… Pretty soon you'll start thinking that I'm blaming teachers for the challenges in our schools…

Most of what I write about in this blog is educational change, usually focused on instruction and/or technology integration (which, of course, is just a subset of “instruction”). But when you talk a lot about changing expectations for teaching and learning, and how teachers teach, and paradigms, and getting them to focus on the right thing instead of the wrong thing, and supervising for those changes, it's easy to start to think that I believe that teachers are the reason that schools aren't changing or that more students aren't learning.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

First off, I write about the changes that need to happen and how to help teachers make those changes because they are things that most teachers have not experienced before themselves.

I believe that the rules for education have changed. The world of work has changed and we now need every child to learn in school what we used to only need the college prep kids to learn (well, actually what has changed is that we now need every kid to be college prep!). Second, new tools (laptops, tablets, cell phones, iPods, information access, personal broadcasting, the read/write web, multimedia, etc.) have changed how kids work, necessitating changing how schools have students learn (or risk becoming irrelevant to students).

As I described when Bea McGarvey came to Auburn, she points out that schools still do industrial age education, when we need an educational system for the information age:

During the industrial age, schools’ goal was to sort out talent and make the rest compliant. We got really good at that. But for this economy, the goal needs to be to develop talent in every child. That’s why we’re so frustrated: we’re trying to meet one goal with a tool that was designed for another…

It doesn’t matter how much we agree with the burning platform that our schools need to work for all our children, or how well we understand that the root problem is how our goals have changed and it isn’t “the teachers’ fault” (Bea says, according to Deming: 95% of the problems are not with the people; they are with the structure), the fact is, at some point teachers understand that they are good at a system designed for an old goal, and that they might not know how to do the system for the new goal…

So teachers are now working in an environment they didn't really experience as students themselves, and probably weren't trained for professionally. Even if teachers need to be the ones making most of the changes, the reason is that the rules have changed, not because they weren't doing a good job.

But even more importantly, we focus on teachers making the changes because teachers are the ones who can solve our challenges. They have the power, the locus of control. When we look at all the factors that impact our students being successful, the one we (schools, educators) have the most control over is teacher practice: what happens in the classroom.

And if teachers have to make changes for a new environment they haven't experienced or been trained for, and if they are the ones who have the power to make the changes, then we have to be very, very clear that we don't blame teachers. Nothing could be more inappropriate, nor unproductive for achieving our new goals.

Instead, what we need to do is support the heck out of teachers.

We need to provide teachers support to a level like we never have before. Side by side with an expectation to teach in ways so all students can learn a high status curriculum, and that makes use of the modern tools for intellectual work, we have to be making a promise to support teachers in this work, making clear we believe in our teachers, and that we know that they can do this hard work. We have to provide training, resources, and time. We have to let teachers try, and allow them to make mistakes, and also to get better – and hold them harmless in this important work. That includes sticking up for them and their efforts, even when (maybe especially when!) it doesn't go well the first time.

If we don't, we guarantee failure: for our schools, for our teachers, and for our students.

 

MLTI: How Will a Multi-state RFP Help Us?

Maine is nearly ready to enter a new contract cycle for the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, and is currently working to craft a new request for proposals from vendors.

The DOE is considering exercising an organizational agreement that would allow other states to buy-in to the terms of our contract.

I recently shared my concerns about this possibility with both Commissioner Bowen and state Tech Director Jeff Mao, and asked them to please consider NOT framing the new MLTI RFP as a multi-state buy-in.

It is generous that the tech director is thinking about how he might help other states by using a provision that would allow other states to essentially access the same agreement that we reach with the successful vendor.

But I’m afraid I don’t see how such an arrangement will benefit us (Maine) and, in fact, I’m worried that it will hurt us. I have worked in both the public sector and the private sector, and although I can see why other states might like the option, I can’t imagine that vendors would.

If part of the motivation is to get a better price by suggesting they’d sell more units (and I admittedly don’t know the reasons the DOE is considering including the option allowing other states to sign on), then I worry that the reasoning is false. I would think that a vendor is more likely to give a better price to a single, well-designed, targeted initiative that had a good chance to showcase their solution.

Also, if our RFP is based on the kinds of changes in learning we’d like to promote (as I advocated in my previous post), it would generate the kinds of proposals that might include very specific software solutions and professional development, as well as hardware and network solutions. These would all be based on Maine’s context, our schools, our learning. How do other states benefit from that? Maybe I could see that if MLTI were simply a tech buy, but we’re not. We’re a learning initiative.

I worry, too, that this arrangement would needlessly make things difficult for a vendor. I would imagine that, even if there is a provision in an agreement between states allowing other states to buy in given our terms, that the vendor would have to still negotiate separate contracts with each state. I don’t think that there is a way for a different state to buy on our terms without having a separate contract with the vendor. And I worry that that which makes things unnecessarily difficulty for a vendor only hurts Maine and the possibilities of our getting a proposal that would include an attractive solution that meets our needs.

And my biggest fear, is that if a multi-state buy-in option is awkward and difficult for vendors, then vendors who could offer us the most attractive solutions will simply choose not to submit a proposal. Frankly, I worry that quality potential applicants will choose not to submit a proposal.

And worse. We can’t even ask our best partner in MLTI what they think. I would imagine that Apple would feel, now that the DOE is working to shape the RFP, that they couldn’t talk to the state about any topic that might even be perceived as related to the RFP. I would imagine that any vendor would think that that was too close to conflict of interest, or even illegal. So a partner that has been very helpful in the past and always quick to collaborate with us on all our challenges is likely to now be a mute partner.

So, if you are also worried about the unintended consequences of including a multi-state buy-in option in the new MLTI RFP, please contact the Commissioner of Education (624-6620; commish.doe@maine.gov) and state Tech Director (624-6634; jeff.mao@maine.gov) to encourage them to frame the RFP around Mane’s needs.

MLTI: What Change in Learning Would You Like to See?

I think one of things that MLTI, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, did well, right out of the gate, was to say it isn't a “tech buy,” but rather a learning initiative. I think this one point is a major reason why the first (and still only) statewide learning with laptop initiative did so well and is more than a decade old. Even the first RFP to prospective vendors focused on what we wanted to do with the technology, rather than tech specs.

And the focus on learning was especially evident in our professional development.

Our PD focused on project-based learning, and the writing process, and mathematical problem solving, etc. We focused on how to teach with technology, not so much on how to use it. And when we did focus on how to use it, it was in the context of how to teach with that tool. We didn't do workshops on how to use a spreadsheet; we did workshops on how to analyze data and the participants left also knowing how to do spreadsheets.

But I've grown concerned that MLTI may be moving away from that focus on learning. To listen to conversations about the initiative, they seem to focus much more on the “stuff” (comparing devices, network and filtering solutions, and discussing software fixes and specifications…) than on teaching and learning. I am not saying that I've heard that from Jeff Mao, Maine's Tech Director, or the DOE, as much from out in the general public. But even so, it has me worried a little…

I think one of the tricks of keeping a mature initiative going is to reflect on what made it great in the first place, and make sure that we keep those pieces fresh, even if they may have gotten a little stale and need refreshing. That's not to say that the MLTI team isn't doing their job. Every initiative needs freshening up when things have been routine for a while!

Right now, the MLTI contract is getting ready to run out and the Department of Education is working to craft a new RFP. What better (and perhaps more appropriate!) time to freshen up an initiative than when designing that initiative's RFP.

So I recently had conversations with both Commissioner of Education Bowen and Jeff Mao, asking them to please consider framing the new MLTI RFP around the change in learning they would like to see in our classrooms. This post reflects some of what I shared with them, first in my phone conversations, and then in a follow up email.

So, I'm hoping that MLTI is still committed to being a “learning initiative” and not a “tech buy.” And if it is, I'm hoping that the RFP can be crafted in such a way that this is evident.

And if so, then what is the change in learning that the Commissioner and the MLTI team are hoping will come about by leveraging the technology? Is it Customized Learning? What would Education Evolving, Maine's new education strategic plan, look like in action and how could technology help bring about? Is it the practices highlighted in the DOE's new Center for Best Practices? What are we hoping students would be doing each day, both on and off their devices, that we would recognize is a change in learning?

Or as I say in presentations, if we're just going to use technology to do what we're already doing, why put the money into technology?

I'm hoping that the Commisioner and the MLTI team will consider framing the RFP in such a way as to make obvious that we are looking for a change in learning, and allow the responding vendors to propose the technical solutions that they think can help get us there.

So, if you think that MLTI should be more than a tech buy, please contact the Commissioner of Education (624-6620; commish.doe@maine.gov) and state Tech Director (624-6634; jeff.mao@maine.gov) to encourage them to frame the RFP around desired changes in learning.

 

 

Positive Pressure and Support: All 3 Pieces

Level of implementation matters.

Unfortunately, simply participating in training and having the right resources available does not mean that students will do better or that your initiative will have it’s desired impact. The degree to which teachers implement your initiative and related strategies matters.

So, how do you drive your initiative to a high level of implemention?

Providing Positive Pressure and Support is how school leaders affect the level of implementation. Positive Pressure and Support is made up of three easy pieces: Expect, Supervise, & Support

The series of posts linked below explore each these pieces.

 

Creating a Shared Vision: The Whole Process

Destination Matters.

This is true with schools, too. Our destination should be more than just the work we do: taking attendance, direct instruction, providing practice, reviewing and assessing work, providing feedback, etc. Why are we bothering to do this work? For that matter, how do we know this is the right work to do?

A fundamental and critical component for the success of any large-scale school change effort is the thoughtful creation, and formal acceptance, of a shared vision for that effort. Education for what? Why bother? A vision tells us what our desire outcome is, and a shared vision has a lot of buy-in, because a large cross-section of people connected to the school were involved in creating it.

The series of posts linked below both explores the need for having a shared vision, as well as describes an easy to implement process for working with a stakeholder group to create your own shared vision.

I like this process enormously.

I like it because it is quick and dirty: it can be accomplished in one or two afternoon or evening meetings. And I like it because it gets right to the crux of the matter: what is our preferred future for the children we care about and what do they need to be doing right now so they can get there?

I like it so much that I used it with my team, when I took a new job.

I know this process is effective, because it was introduced early in the implementation of MLTI and I have used with a variety of schools and districts across the country since.

Building a Shared Vision Part 3: How Will We Get There?

If you are reading this, I suspect you want to help move your school or district forward, and recognize that a critical first step is developing a shared vision with stakeholders, including your staff and community.

This is the third post describing a process to quickly build an effective vision. The first post set up the activity. The second post described how to collaboratively envision a preferred future for students you care about. This post will describe the final step in the process, developing a plan for preparing students for that preferred future.

The process enters its final phase with reflecting on your vision of where you’d like students to live, work, and learn, then asking your participants to return to “today” and think “Let’s all get to work …”

Without a plan, the vision created in the futuring phase will remain at best a dream. The worse outcome would be that it would not be used to improve teaching and learning. In short, given a clear view of what this stakeholder group wants the future to hold for their students, it is now time to use that vision to help design the kind of schools, school community, and classroom practices that can be reasonably expected to deliver those desired outcomes.

If this is our preferred future for our students, what do students, teachers, administrators, and tech coordinators need to do now to prepare students for that future?

The Student Plan
By accepting that student practice has to be the center of the target, and given the vision created in the last post, ask participants what a student would be doing in the classroom today if they were going to be “on track” for becoming the learner they have envisioned.

Have a new chart paper sheet labeled “Student.” The prompt is, “If this is what we want for our students’ futures, what does the student need to be doing now to get ready?” Record everything that they call out.

Sample Student Plan List

  • Action based
  • Connected to the community
  • Critical and creative thinking
  • Engaged in problem solving; both real world and simulations
  • Group – more collaboration and integration
  • Independent & self directed
  • Information – equity of access to resources – not limited by location or time of day
  • Initiative – connections to student interest
  • Organize – self-organized & time management
  • Presenting, sharing, and teaching others
  • Problem solving skills (learning them) (real problems, community based)
  • Projects – authentic, integrated projects
  • Real world problem solving and service learning
  • Questioning and research skills
  • Self assessment
  • Comfortable with technology

Once the student practices have been described (which you can expect to focus on inquiry, self-directed learning, teaming, research rather than memorization, growing as a learner, etc.) the participants will be ready to think about the kinds of changes in student practice we need in our classrooms.

This is an interesting process. If you start here with student practice, you get a list of preparatory activities that really does reflect the future you have described, but it also suggests how teacher practice needs to change. But not following these steps can derail the process and not give you the information you need.

I once worked with a group that ended up skipping the step of starting with what students need to be doing now to get ready for this future, and instead simply asked what needs to happen in the classroom to prepare for this future. This group happened to be all teachers, not a larger stakeholders group. Interestingly, they simply generated a list of traditional teaching practices and “shoulds” for students (They should do their homework. They should behave. Etc.).

I think a couple things happened. One was a little bit of paradigm paralysis. When we asked what should happen in the classroom, we thought right away about what we were used to doing in the classroom. And this was exasperated by the fact that the notion of what should happen in the classroom is just that much further removed from that preferred future than the notion of what a student should be doing now to get ready (the preferred future, after all, is about students, not classrooms). The combination of paradigm paralysis and being further removed from our preferred future kept us from coming up with a plan that was likely to get us to that future.

So the lesson is: starting with student practice is critical.

The Teacher Plan
Once the student practices have been described, ask participants to envision a classroom of today where those student practices were a reality, and describe what the teacher would be doing. In this way, they will define the “teacher practices” that would effectively support the visioned student practices.

Add another chart paper sheet labeled “Teacher” and ask the group, “If this is what the students need to be doing to get ready, what do the teachers need to do?” Record what they call out.

Sample Teacher Plan List

  • Collaboration with both kids and adults
  • Facilitator / coach
  • Flexible
  • Learner & being co-learners with kids
  • Mentor and modeling
  • Taking risks, supporting risk taking, and letting go
  • Technology as a tool, not as a add on

The Administration & Support Plan
With teacher practices defined, ask participants to move out another level to describe the Principal and Tech Coordinator actions that would be seen if one were to visit a school in which the visioned student practices were happening. It will also be important to describe central office administrative practices that would support the now-visioned building Principal and Tech Coordinator practices.

Add a last chart paper sheet labeled “Administration & Support” (or maybe separate sheets for each subgroup) and ask the group, “If this is what the students and teachers need to be doing to get ready, what do the administrators, assistants, curriculum coordinators, tech directors, and other support teams need to do?” Record everything that they call out.

Sample Administrator Plan List

  • Communicator, especially with community
  • Goal setting and establishing high expectations
  • Applaud failures as learning experiences and encourage reflection
  • Involved – visible, consulting with teachers, and working with kids
  • Modeling learning, and the use of technology
  • PR – advocating vision, and working for systematic change
  • Supporting and encouraging risk taking, and making it safe for teachers
  • Support – providing professional development, encouraging teachers, and removing and managing obstacles
  • Allow time for collaboration, planning, and learning

Sample Tech Directors Plan List

  • Keeping current
  • Learning constantly
  • Make it work /keep it working
  • Provide infrastructure, tools, and professional development
  • Share information, wisdom, and some of the control
  • Supporting & championing the vision
  • Understands education and learning, not just the equipment
  • Team teach with classroom teacher (while teaching the teacher)

Congratulations!
Your stakeholder group should now be congratulated! By working outwards from the student, a clear focus throughout will be maintained on the students and their practices, and all other efforts would be in support of those changes. You now have a draft vision that can be used to drive your work, including decisions about resource selection and allocation, the use of technology, and professional development.

There are still a couple steps. What was generated on chart paper should be typed up and the language cleaned up a little and made clearer. The two part vision document (the preferred future and the plan) are now ready to be shared with the wider school community, including those who were not part of the stakeholder group that created it. You might even go through a process of collecting feedback from those who weren’t at the event and then seek formal approval of the vision from the educators, and then from the community.

Building a Shared Vision Part 2: Where Will They Be?

Creating a shared vision is a critical step in school improvement efforts. This post is the continuation of an effective process for creating such a shared vision. In the previous post, we discussed the background of the process, who to invite, and some of the set up.

This portion focuses on how to arrive at the preferred future we have for students we care about. The next post will highligh the last steps in the process. You’ll like this process for the same reasons I like it: it is quick and dirty, and gets to the crux of what we want for students.

Think of a Student You Care About
You’ve welcomed the attendees and gotten them seated at their tables. The first step in the work (after introductions at tables), is to ask participants to think of a student they care about.

Participants should be directed to think of the students “as their own children.” This is considered a critical component to insure that during this visioning process they do not get “mired in current reality” (get too frustrated thinking about the students who frustrate them!), but rather allow and encourage them to “vision the best” for students they care as much about as they do their own children.

Where Will They Be In the Future?
Next ask them to think into the future for that student – through middle school, high school, college/military/training, to a time when they are living and working on their own.

And ask them to think about “where” their students will be, specifically in three domains:

  • Professionally (What work will your students be doing for work?)
  • Learning (What, where, and how will your students be learning?)
  • Physically (Where will your students be living?)

Have individuals (independently) record their own responses (you might provide each table with scratch paper, or a handout with boxes for each of these three domains, where participants can jot their thoughts).

Next, have each table compile their answers.

The table groups can then reconvene as a whole group to share their Where Will They Be? lists. The facilitator can have three chart paper sheets—one labeled “Physical Location,” one labeled “Learning Location,” and one “Working Location,” and list everything that tables report out. Have groups report out on only one of these three domains at a time. Perhaps use a Round Robin approach, where each group only shares one item on their list, then the next group shares one, and so on. Groups are asked to avoid repeats, and the facilitator keeps going around until all items have been shared and recorded.

Repeat similarly for each of the other two domains.

Occasionally, while asking “where will the be?”, someone will suggest something like “Walmart” or “in jail.” It’s usually good for a laugh from the group, and clearly they are focusing too much on the students they don’t know what to do with. But these kinds of comments can start to lead the group down a very negative path. It is prudent to ask the group, “Is this really our preferred future for students we care about?” This will get the group back on track to creating a desirable vision.

Sample Responses
Below are some of the common responses I have received from various groups.

What Kinds of Jobs Will Students Have?

  • Choice – doing something they enjoy – following a passion
  • Communication
  • Community – give to society
  • Data – analyzing data, patterns, predicting, managing information
  • Family – home – strengthening family connection
  • Flexible – very flexible – working smarter not harder
  • Global technology based industry
  • Healthcare
  • Home – working online from home and traveling to job sites
  • Medical, research and development, bio-tech
  • New – profession that has not yet been invented
  • Professional
  • Research
  • Service industry (stores)
  • Technology as part of work

Where Will They Live?

  • Choice – living where they would like
  • Close to family & Maine (home state), & their home town – staying connected
  • Return – go where they want, but come home
  • Community – feeling of community / connected environment (human)
  • Some particular part of the state (such as Southern Maine)

What Will Their Learning Look Like in the Future?

  • Choice – anywhere / anytime
  • Collaborate – unavoidably, in teams and groups – connection
  • Communication
  • Distance learning
  • Experiential – learn from experience on job
  • Face to face – personal interaction
  • Global
  • Higher degrees
  • Use & find various resources and solve problems and adapt to task
  • Self directed & independent
  • Technology based, wireless, online

I have shared these lists to give you a sampling of the kinds of preferred future groups might envision. But don’t make the mistake of trying to build a vision around these here (or any other list belonging to someone else). Your list only gains its value if it is your own. You need to ask the questions of your own stakeholder group.

But once you have your own lists of where the students will be in the future, let your participants know that this is their preferred future. This is what they want for the students they really care about. And remind participants that if this is what we want for the students’ future, then we need to start preparing them for it now.

But we tackle that in the next post…

Building a Shared Vision Part 1: Where To Begin?

Destination Matters.

This is true with schools, too. Our destination should be more than just the work we do: taking attendance, direct instruction, providing practice, reviewing and assessing work, providing feedback, etc. Why are we bothering to do this work? For that matter, how do we know this is the right work to do?

We can answer those questions if we work with our staff, students, families, and community to create a shared vision. A vision tells us what our desire outcome is and a shared vision has a lot of buy-in, because a large cross section of people connected to the school were involved in creating it.

A Vision Building Process That Works
This post describes the beginning of a process I like enormously. I like it because it is quick and dirty: it can be accomplished in one or two afternoon or evening meetings. And I like it because it gets right to the crux of the matter: what is our preferred future for the children we care about and what do they need to be doing right now so they can get there?

This is the same process that was introduced early in the implementation of MLTI.

In the spring of 2002, eighteen regional meetings were held around Maine in support of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI). Each school sent a shared leadership team (a teacher leader, building principal, and technology coordinator). Hosted by the nine Exploration Schools of the MLTI, these meetings were designed and facilitated by Bette Manchester, Distinguished Educator at the Maine Department of Education, and members of her Design Team for Curriculum and Professional Development (I was involved in a couple of those, and have used this process with diverse groups since). Educators from all of the 239 MLTI schools attended the meetings.

Out of these meetings came both a statewide vision for the future of Maine’s students, including defining the role of technology in that vision, and a replicable process for building a shared visioning back at their own schools.

Who To Invite
The place to start, of course, is to think about who to invite.

It is important to have as many people as you can physically accommodate, and to have as broad a cross section of participants as you can. At a minimum, you should have representatives from administration, the staff, students, parents, and other community members. And don’t just invite the historically “supportive” people. A shared vision is a powerful tool precisely because it is shared, because it has broad approval. And when people of all perspectives are represented in that work, it is a very strong document.

The process will involve individual, small group, and large group interaction, so I’d recommend a venue with tables for small groups, rather than rows of chairs, or “theater seating.” You will need name tags, individual writing materials (pens or pencils, and scratch paper should be fine), chart paper, masking tape, and markers.

You should think about who will be attending and how you might want them grouped. At the MLTI meetings, participants were broken into groups of 6, including complete teams (Teacher Leaders, Principals, & Technology Coordinators) in the same group; we wanted the local shared leadership teams working together.

Once you have everyone at the meeting, the first half of the process is called, “Where will they be?” and focuses on the preferred future we have for students we care about. This will be the focus of the next post…

The Need For a Shared Vision

Destination matters.

What if you were a sailboat captain.

Let’s even say you’ve got a great boat and a wonderful crew. Together you’ve done a lot of sailing. Maybe you even work well together and know how to collaboratively operate the boat to maneuver well and go really fast, coaxing its peak performance.

But what does all this mean if you have no destination?

Or worse, what would happen if each of you had a different picture of where you were headed? What would the outcome be then?

In fact, you may only be able to judge how successful you are when you judge it against how well you did getting to a specific destination.

Perhaps a day sail out to the island is a different kind of work than a sail from Maine to the Keys. Maybe sailing to Antarctica is different than sailing to Spain (as Shackleton will tell you!). Maybe sailing the Intercoastal Waterway is different than sailing across the ocean. Destination matters and it defines the specifics of the work you need to do, despite the commonalities of the work. Doing the work isn’t the desired outcome. Getting to the destination is the desired outcome, and the work is how you get there.

Now, you might question my metaphor since sailing is just sometimes about heading out and enjoying the water, but I’d argue that that was a pretty specific destination. And think about how frustrated you would be, if the crew thought that was the destination and you thought you were headed to Vinalhaven Island!?

Schools also need to be on the same page about their destination. A fundamental and critical component for the success of any large-scale school change effort is the thoughtful creation and formal acceptance of a shared vision for that effort. Education for what? Why bother?

A shared vision in not only a description of what you want your desired outcome of school to be, but is one that is held in wide agreement with your administration, staff, students, families, and community.

In spite of the renewed interest in having a shared vision brought on by the Proficiency-Based Learning work going on in some Maine districts, I believe this is a piece of work that is overlooked all too often. Sometimes I think schools, districts, and state Departments of Education think their destination (vision) is simply to “do school,” to go through the motions of schooling as we’ve been going through them. It is no wonder that some districts see no reason to change (after all, if the purpose of sailing is simply to see how well you work the rudder and sails, any port will do, won’t it?), or just believe that the purpose of school is obvious and get frustrated with people who don’t and want to spend time on “this touchy feely stuff!”

And thus is the problem with schools and shared visions. Districts, schools, or states can either assume that their existing mission or purpose statements (despite often being created as so much rhetoric) can simply be spread to cover any new effort, or they simply assume that everyone understands that school, or the initiative, “is important” (especially if someone else has said that you have do it, such as implementing the Common Core).

The trouble with the former is that traditional mission or purpose statements are not future-focused enough to be effectively used in support of an large-scale change effort, such as 1to1 tablets or laptops, or Customized Learning. In the latter case, a lack of a fully developed shared vision (because you all just assume “it is important”) will mean that the time will inevitably come when it becomes clear that individual beliefs about what the vision “is” (but remember they don’t know, because they assumed) compete and contradict each other, and disrupt any forward momentum, unraveling (or at least stalling) your initiative.

So what should we do about a shared vision?

There are certainly lots of approaches. Which ever approach you choose, it should meet a couple criteria:

  • The vision should be both realistic and creative
  • It should reflect the contexts of both your students and school
  • It should also reflect what you hope for your students and their futures
  • The process should involve a broad a group of stakeholders (administration, staff, students, parents, community members)

I’m getting ready to blog (in three parts) one of my favorite approaches to creating a shared vision. Like a lot of my favorite strategies, it is based on lessons learned from MLTI, the first and only state-wide 1to1 learning with laptop initiative, now over a decade old. This post, and the next two on building a shared vision, come from materials that were jointly written by Jim Moulton and me, and were distributed to educators in the early years of MLTI. (Note: Those portions of these posts that may have been originally penned by Jim are used with his kind permission. Any inaccuracies, errors, or erroneous information are certainly all mine.)

Not All Motivators Are Created Equal

I continue to get questions from educators about motivating seemingly unmotivated students. The teachers are often frustrated because they are “trying hard” and “working hard,” but with little to no payoff.

When I talk more with those teachers, I find two common misperceptions that stand in the way of the teacher being more successful (they are hard to teach students, after all. We can't expect complete success motivating them!): (a) motivation resides entirely within the student (the teacher has no role in student motivation); or (b) all teacher efforts to motivate are created equal and should have the same impact on students.

The teachers who believe (a) have larger issues… (The research is pretty clear – as is common sense: teachers who don't believe they can influence student learning, don't.)

But we can work with teachers who believe (b)!

Most of these teachers who are struggling to motivate students, are simply trying to leverage the wrong motivators, often undermining their own efforts.

Many of the struggling teachers I have observed have the right instincts and do try to motivate students, but most of the motivators teachers say they use, or were observed using, tend to be “low payoff” motivators such as showing enthusiasm, being nice to students, or using manipulatives.

They also used “no payoff” motivators such as grades, or statements like “you’re going to need this in high school (or college, or work, etc),” or “it’s going to be on the state test.” These may be motivators for easy to teach students, or important to teachers, but they tend not to be motivators for hard to teach students. In many cases, this approach only succeeded in agitating the hard to teach students or exasperating undesirable behavior. It’s no wonder that if teachers are putting a lot of energy into these kinds of motivators that they are frustrated with the results, and the students.

But, trying to teach hard to teach students qualifies as extraordinary circumstances requiring extraordinary efforts.

Teachers need to not just “try” or “work hard”; they need to try the right things and work hard at effective practices.

Teachers who were more successful motivating the students used strategies such as making the material interesting, using real world examples, or leveraging their positive relationship with the students.

Teachers need to be using “high payoff” motivators, such as these:

  • Project-based learning
  • Connecting with students
  • Connecting learning to the community and the students’ lives
  • Focusing on higher order thinking activities
  • Learning by doing
  • Making learning interesting
  • Involving students in designing their learning

(It's not hard to see how these map onto the Meaningful Engaged Learning Focus 5)

Dewey reminds us just how important using effective motivators is:

Our whole policy of compulsory education rises or falls with our ability to make school life an interesting and absorbing experience to the child. In one sense there is no such thing as compulsory education. We can have compulsory physical attendance at school; but education comes only through willing attention to and participation in school activities. It follows that the teacher must select these activities with reference to the child’s interests, powers, and capacities. In no other way can she guarantee that the child will be present. (1913, p. ix)

 

Sometimes Humor is the Best Way to Correct Behavior

So, one of your hard to teach student has just acted up in class again. Or maybe he isn't acting out, but just won't do the assignment or get into the lesson.

What do you do?

You've got to do something fast, before that student's behavior starts affecting the rest of the class…

Just as helping students save face can be a powerful tool in reaching hard to teach students, so is the use of humor. Several of the students in the underachievers study said they preferred teachers who used humor. Humor builds and preserves relationships. In fact, I often find that humor works better than many other strategies, especially when trying to correct student behavior.

I had a student named James, who was the kind of student who was always inappropriate, but in funny ways, and I was always trying to get the class back on task after his antics while trying not to laugh uproariously! I really enjoyed him and I wished I didn’t have to teach the whole class while he was there! I just wished I could have him one on one and help him learn whatever I could, and then deal with the rest of the class separately.

I prayed for those days James was absent. But, of course, he never was.

One day James was driving me crazy and I finally had to send him out in the hall. I followed him out, wondering what I could possibly say to James that he had not heard a thousand times before. He got dressed down in the hall regularly: I’d be walking in the hall, and there would be James with another teacher, and I would say to myself, “Oops! He did it again!” Clearly the traditional scolding wasn’t changing James’ behavior.

I had to think about what my goal was. Was it to punish and chastise James for being a pain (which clearly had a track record of not working)? Or was it to get him to settle down so I could teach the class?

Out in the hall, I closed the door and maneuvered so that James’s back was to the door, so I could see the class through the narrow window. I wasn’t sure how to get what I needed, but, on a whim, decided to try humor. My intuitive response to James was, “Do you want to play a trick on the rest of the class?”

This was not what he was expecting, and, although he wasn't really sure where this was going, said he would, albeit a bit hesitantly.

I whispered, “I’m going to start yelling and screaming at you about your behavior and I want you to throw yourself up against the door.” Given his facial expression, he was now a willing coconspirator, without reservation!

As I yelled, “James, I’ve had enough of you!!!” he’d throw himself against the door. Boom!!! Boom!!

Then I'd yell, “I’m trying to teach the whole class and I can’t do that while you’re in there fooling around!!!” Boom!!! Boom!! Boom!

And this continued for a couple more rounds.

Well, he was the consummate actor and kept up the show as we returned to the room, staggering, like he’d taken an awful beating! Hamming it up all the way. I just went in with a straight face and went right back to teaching as if nothing had ever happened. The whole class was on its best behavior, playing along, seeing the whole event as the hoax it was, but now playing the properly cowed students!

This approach was a bit of a risk, and it only worked because I knew James and my other students well (and they knew me). I knew what was likely to work with James and what wasn't; there were certainly other students that I would never dream of doing something like this with.

But it did seem to be exactly the right move with James. The change in him was great, at least for a couple weeks (Only a couple of weeks!?, you say… What was the last intervention you did with a hard to teach student that lasted more than 5 minutes, let alone a couple of weeks!?!). I had to hardly speak to James about his behavior at all. We’d just see each other and laugh. But I got want I wanted: James to be settled enough that I could teach the class. As his old ways started to creep back into class, I would look at him sternly and ask, “Do you want more of the same!?” and he'd laugh and playfully protest, “No! No!” and he'd settle down for a couple more days.

Since then, I've figured it works out better for me (and the whole class) if I do whatever I need to to get the behavior I want (from any student, not just James), even if it doesn’t include punishment. There’s no doubt James knew what was right and what was wrong. There is no doubt that James' behavior warranted punishment or a scolding. There’s no doubt that James knew that he was disrupting the class. But it turned out I didn’t need to yell, or scold, or punish him. Besides! None of those worked when other teachers did them!

What I got was something much more useful: we ended up being allies.

By using humor, I could work much better with James (and much more importantly, James would work with me!). Over time, I got much more of the behavior I wanted from James! And this lesson helped me get much more of the behavior I wanted from my other hard to teach students, too.