In This Issue:

1. Making classrooms and schools safe for introverts

2. The answer for lonely “singleton” teachers: A virtual PLC

3. Teachers’ impact on students’ academic and non-academic outcomes

4. An essential variable in teacher attrition

5. Making learning visible – on-the-spot checks for understanding

6. Lesson study as a vehicle for improving formative assessments

7. Turn-ons and turn-offs in preschool classrooms

8. Four fundamental questions for teacher teams

9. Short items: (a) A Holocaust survivor gives his violin to a Bronx student; (b) Key websites

 

Quotes of the Week

“They’re raising their hands first, and the teacher is calling on them. That’s the root of the problem. The extroverts are used to being called on – for years teachers have called on them, and they expect it. But research shows that as soon as a hand goes up, the other brains in the room shut down.”

            Susan Cain (see item #1)

 

“Teaching must balance lesson planning with improvising.”

Brent Duckor, Carrie Holmberg, and Joanne Rossi Becker (see item #5)

 

“PLCs operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for the students is continuous job-embedded learning for the educators.”

            Mike Mattos in “Four Simple Words: A Focus on Learning” in All Things PLC, Winter

2017, https://issuu.com/mm905/docs/allthingsplc_winter_2017

 

“What’s loose? What’s tight?”

            Marc Johnson on the question all schools must answer, in “On a Learning-by-Doing

Journey of Improvement, There is No Destination Called Good Enough” in All Things

PLC, Winter 2017

 

“Mathematicians love the struggle. When you feel uncomfortable, you’re learning.”

            A New York City teacher in “Math and Race: When the Equation is Unequal” by Amy

Harmon in The New York Times, February 19, 2017, http://nyti.ms/2lrkLHN

 

“You might consider yourself to be a fascinating person, but you shouldn’t be more interesting than whatever activity these 3- or 4-year-olds are engaged in.”

            David Kirp on visitors being mobbed by kids in a preschool classroom (see item #7)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Making Classrooms and Schools Safe for Introverts

            In this article in Harvard Magazine, Lydialyle Gibson reports on the work of Susan Cain, the “fairy godmother of introverts” and author of the best-selling book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (Broadway Books, 2013). According to Cain, between one-third and one-half of people are introverts, yet classrooms and workplaces tend to favor extroverts. “Today we make room for a remarkably narrow range of personality styles,” she says. “We’re told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts – which means that we’ve lost sight of who we really are.”

            Cain’s working definition of the introverted temperament draws on the work of Carl Jung, Jerome Kagan, and other psychologists: Introverts look inward to a world of thoughts and feelings; need solitude to recharge their batteries; are empathetic and reflective; prefer listening to talking; think before they speak; are less likely to die in car crashes and more likely to pay attention to warning signals; tend to make peace and offer counsel; have strong powers of concentration; are mostly immune to the lures of wealth and fame; and tend to be artistic and creative, especially when they work alone. Some notable introverts: Charles Darwin, Dr. Seuss, Rosa Parks, Albert Einstein, Steve Wozniak, Steven Spielberg, J.K. Rowling.

            Cain has set up a for-profit organization titled Quiet Revolution that trains students, teachers, and others to understand the extrovert-introvert spectrum and make changes that allow everyone to contribute. Some of the areas her organization is working on:

-   Fostering clarity, communication, and understanding among classmates and co-workers along the introvert-extrovert spectrum;

-   Encouraging individual as well as team projects;

-   Giving team members advance notice of meeting agendas;

-   Creating “corners for solitude and silence” including places in schools for a quiet lunch;

-   Not basing class participation grades on the quantity of words uttered;

-   Giving quiet but attentive students a way of signaling to the teacher that they’re with it;

-   At the same time, giving quiet students a “gentle push” to speak up (one precept: if you have something to say, say it early in the class so you can then relax and listen);

-   Subtle techniques like saying toward the end of a class or meeting, “In a minute, I will say, ‘Does anyone have any other thoughts or questions or ideas?’ – I will say that in a minute.” This gives the introverts time to reflect and get ready to participate.

In a classroom or workplace that’s sensitive to extrovert-introvert characteristics, Cain believes there’s a sense of self-awareness, trust, and safety from which everyone benefits: “Oh, that’s who I am; I make decisions more quickly” or “I multitask more easily” or “That’s why I’m quiet” or “I’m not less than the kid next to me who’s raising his hand all the time.”

            Classroom discussions are where teachers need to be particularly aware of the tendency for extroverts to dominate and get more value from the class than others. “They’re raising their hands first, and the teacher is calling on them,” says Cain. “That’s the root of the problem. The extroverts are used to being called on – for years teachers have called on them, and they expect it. But research shows that as soon as a hand goes up, the other brains in the room shut down.”

 

“Quiet, Please: Susan Cain Foments the ‘Quiet Revolution’” by Lydialyle Gibson in Harvard Magazine, March-April 2017 (Vol. 119, #4, p. 31-35), no e-link available

Back to page one

 

2. The Answer for Lonely “Singleton” Teachers: A Virtual PLC

            In this article in All Things PLC, consultant Casey Reason addresses the challenges of singleton teachers who want to engage in the PLC process but don’t have colleagues in their school who teach the same content. Reason gives the example of Rogene, a high-school world language teacher in a rural district who was eager to collaborate on the content and assessments of her German courses, but the nearest teacher of German was 100 miles away. This teacher:

-   Lacked a peer group to examine the curriculum and identify essential learning;

-   Was working with the Spanish teacher in her school to improve their respective interim assessments, but Rogene didn’t have a colleague with whom to share the student results on the specific assessments she was using;

-   By working alone, she didn’t have a discipline-specific colleague to challenge her with new perspectives or sensibilities;

-   Rogene couldn’t explore the deepest elements of collaboration and immerse herself in the process of reciprocal accountability – leading and being led.

What are singleton teachers like this to do? The answer, says Reason, is virtual collaboration. Here’s how it worked for Rogene:

            • Establishing a virtual team – She found three other German teachers in her state and got support from all four districts to carve out professional time to collaborate online. By banking PD time, the districts allowed the four teachers to have an in-person meeting at the beginning of the school year and set up the protocols and norms for the PLC, as well as deciding on their weekly time for virtual meetings.

            • Curriculum focus – The teachers decided to collaborate only on German 1 and master the unfamiliar process of collaborating at a distance on this one course. Although each district had its own graded courses of study, their curriculum goals were based on state and national standards, so expectations were quite similar.

            • Virtual meetings – The teachers used Google Hangout for their weekly get-togethers. In Rogene’s school, she was able to use a digital course room (a “shell”) for the meetings and the other three teachers were given access. Teachers were able to post meeting notes, ask each other questions in discussion spaces, share data, and see each others’ faces live as they met.

            • Broadening collaboration – As the weeks went by, teachers flooded the course room with links to articles, videos, and other teaching tools. Weekly logins increased, and the teachers began to rely on each other as important contributors to their work. Rogene was active on Twitter and found 20 other German 1 teachers from other states who, although they didn’t join the weekly Google Hangout meetings, began sharing ideas and materials with the team.

            • Spreading the word – At the end of the school year, the virtual German 1 team got the green light from their districts to design and present their own PD webinar in the fall, highlighting what they had learned in their PLC. With help from a retired international headmaster who was teaching German in North Florida, they arranged to bring in a guest speaker from Switzerland for their webinar.

            Reason sums up the ways this virtual team was able to capture all the key elements of a conventional in-person PLC:

-   Communication – The electronic course room gave the team virtual office space to store and share key items and communicate asynchronously.

-   Collegial horizon – Rogene remained friendly with the Spanish teacher in her school but greatly expanded her professional scope.

-   Innovation – Ideas flowed among the teachers in the regular meetings and the resources accumulated in the course room, both from the core group of four teachers and from others who joined informally in the course of the year.

-   Access to professional expertise – Contributions from around the U.S. and abroad greatly expanded Rogene’s teaching repertoire.

-   Best practices – “Interestingly,” says Reason, “Rogene found that there were some rather significant differences of opinion emerging both from within her team and from the outside perspectives that were shared as others made contributions along the way. What her team learned was that their differences made them stronger. Debate was encouraged, and as always, it came down to examining their own measurable results.”

-   Acceleration – By committing ideas to writing in the course room, these teachers found they had to be more precise than if they were making comments in an in-person meeting. Their ideas “congealed and improved,” says Reason, and dialogues “became deeper and, in many cases, more stimulating.”

Reason concludes with a few cautions for virtual teams: (a) Don’t cut corners on the fundamentals of the PLC process; (b) Tempting as it may be to get caught up with a remote team, stay grounded in your own school’s mission and values; (c) It’s important to meet in person at least once, preferably at the beginning of the collaboration; (d) Use a format that allows team members to see each others’ faces live; (e) Establish a space that allows materials to be shared asynchronously; and (f) Allow ideas, best practices, and materials to be shared on an open source basis.

 

“Crossing the Chasm: Singleton Teachers and Virtual Teams” by Casey Reason in All Things PLC, Winter 2017, http://bit.ly/2m4aphl

Back to page one

 

3. Teachers’ Impact on Students’ Academic and Non-Academic Outcomes

            In this Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis article, David Blazar (Harvard University) and Matthew Kraft (Brown University) report on their study of four classroom variables in upper-elementary math classrooms:

-   Emotional support of students;

-   Classroom organization (discipline and maximizing instructional time);

-   Ambitious math instruction;

-   Teachers’ mathematical errors and imprecision in the presentation of content.

Blazar and Kraft correlated data in those areas with the gains students made in five areas:

-   Scores on high-stakes math tests;

-   Score on low-stakes math tests;

-   Students’ self-efficacy in math;

-   Students’ happiness in class;

-   Students’ behavior in class.

What emerged were (a) quite strong correlations between teachers’ emotional support of students and classroom organization and students’ self-efficacy in math, happiness in class, and classroom behavior; (b) quite strong correlations between the quality of teachers’ math pedagogy and students’ test scores and math self-efficacy; and (c) wide variations in different teachers’ impact on students’ academic versus non-academic outcomes – in other words, some teachers were successful at getting high test scores but were less successful producing students who were happy and well-behaved in school. The social-emotional variables, needless to say, are very important to students’ future success.

The researchers were also intrigued by the fact that some teachers who were effective in classroom organization had students who were well-behaved and happy in class, while other teachers with similarly high ratings in classroom organization had students who were unhappy in class. This suggests that different discipline methods affect non-academic results in very different ways. The authors describe themselves as “on the hunt” for classroom techniques that result in constructive classroom behavior and happy students.

            What are the implications of this study? Blazar and Kraft believe their findings mean that schools should take advantage of the new ESSA accountability requirement to incorporate a nonacademic indicator that includes data on student attitudes and behaviors. This, they say, “could serve as a strong signal that schools and educators should value and attend to developing these skills in the classroom.” However, they caution against attaching high stakes to those non-academic data because (a) the science of measuring students’ attitudes is not highly developed, and (b) high stakes can distort and possibly corrupt the process.

            Blazar and Kraft say their findings also have implications for teacher training and the stage in the K-8 sequence where math departmentalization should be introduced. A final observation: they believe classroom observations and subsequent rubric-scoring of teachers should contain all the rubric elements to provide data for coaching and professional development. Presenting teacher ratings as domain averages or numerical composites “oversimplifies the complex nature of teaching,” say the authors. “For example, a teacher who excels at developing students’ math content knowledge but struggles to promote joy in learning or students’ own self-efficacy in math is a very different teacher than one who is middling across all three measures. Looking at these two teachers’ composite scores would suggest they are similarly effective. A single overall evaluation score lends itself to a systematized process for making binary decisions such as whether to grant teacher tenure, but such decisions would be better informed by recognizing and considering the full complexity of classroom practice.”

 

“Teacher and Teaching Effects on Students’ Attitudes and Behaviors” by David Blazar and Matthew Kraft in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, March 2017 (Vol. 39. #1, p. 146-170), http://bit.ly/2lgpFmV; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

Back to page one

 

4. An Essential Variable in Teacher Attrition

            In this Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis article, Susan Burkhauser (Loyola Marymount University, RAND) reports that 16 percent of U.S. public school teachers leave their schools each year. While there are times when a teacher’s departure is a net plus for the school, most teacher turnover has a negative effect on:

-   The budget (replacing a teacher costs between $4,400 and $17,900)

-   Staff cohesion and culture;

-   Student achievement;

-   The achievement gap – turnover disproportionately affects low-SES schools.

Burkhauser found that teachers’ perception of their schools’ professional working conditions “greatly influences their decisions to leave their schools.” Her six-year study of North Carolina schools focused on the role of the principal in creating the kinds of conditions conducive to low teacher attrition. Remarkably, she found that improving principal effectiveness by one notch (one adjusted standard deviation) had the same effect on teacher attitudes as reducing their class size by seven students or shifting the student-teacher ratio to 8-to-1.

            The details: Burkhauser divided professional working conditions into four areas and looked at what teachers said about each one:

• Teacher time use:

-   Reasonable class sizes, affording teachers time to meet students’ needs;

-   Time to collaborate with colleagues;

-   Duties that don’t interfere with instruction;

-   Minimized routine administrative paperwork;

-   Sufficient non-instructional time for teachers.

• Physical environment:

-   Sufficient access to appropriate instructional materials and resources; computers, printers, software, the Internet; phones, faxes, e-mail, and network drives; and copy machines, paper, pens, etc.;

-   Reliable and sufficiently speedy Internet connections to support instructional practices;

-   Adequate professional space to work productively;

-   A clean and well-maintained school environment;

-   A safe school environment.

• Teacher empowerment and school leadership:

-   Teachers trusted to make sound professional decisions about instruction;

-   An effective process for making group decisions and solving problems;

-   A problem-solving ethos in the faculty;

-   An atmosphere of trust and mutual respect;

-   Rules for student conduct consistently enforced;

-   Teachers’ efforts to maintain discipline in the classroom consistently supported;

-   Teachers supported by administrators;

-   Effective leadership from the school improvement team;

-   A shared vision among faculty and staff;

-   Teachers held to high professional standards for delivering instruction;

-   Consistent procedures for teacher performance evaluations;

-   Feedback to improve teaching;

-   A sustained effort by school leaders to address teacher concerns about facilities and resources; the use of time; PD; leadership issues; and new teacher support;

-   Overall, teachers believing the school was a good place to teach and learn.

• Professional development:

-   Sufficient funds and resources available to allow teachers to take advantage of PD activities;

-   Adequate time for PD;

-   Sufficient training for teachers to make full use of instructional technology.

Burkhauser found that teachers’ ratings were highly correlated among the four areas, and she was able to statistically isolate the impact of different principals across schools, showing that they were clearly the key variable in bringing about positive professional working conditions.

            “The results of this study have important policy implications,” Burkhauser concludes. “Districts struggling with high teacher turnover either across the board or at specific schools might think about assessing teachers’ perception of their working environments. If school environment ratings are low, districts should look at the principal as an important player in improving the conditions of the school.”

 

“How Much Do School Principals Matter When It Comes to Teacher Working Conditions?” by Susan Burkhauser in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, March 2017 (Vol. 39. #1, p. 126-145), http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0162373716668028; Burkhauser can be reached at [email protected].

Back to page one

 

5. Making Learning Visible: On-the-Spot Checks for Understanding

            “Teaching must balance lesson planning with improvising,” say Brent Duckor, Carrie Holmberg, and Joanne Rossi Becker (San José State University) in this article in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. They believe formative assessment in classrooms is more than calling for thumbs up/thumbs down, using clickers, giving quizzes, processing exit slips, and managing interim test data. It should also include real-time instructional adaptations, listening carefully to and making sense of students’ unexpected responses (a “window” into their thinking), giving feedback on the fly, and interjecting “just-in-time moves that promote a conscious and strategic use of student thinking.”

Duckor, Holmberg, and Becker suggest seven formative assessment moves that should be “fluid, flexible, and ubiquitous” during a lesson and “create opportunities for all students to interact productively and persistently with higher-order thinking.”

• Priming – Preparing the groundwork; establishing norms; acting to acculturate students to learning publicly. For example, a teacher might say: “I’m so glad you asked that question because it seemed like maybe some other people had the same question.”

• Pausing – Giving students adequate time to think and respond as individuals or as groups; the teacher poses a question to the whole class but doesn’t call on students for a few seconds, putting hand to chin in a pose reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker and conveying the message, “We take our time to raise our hands. I am protecting individual student think time now.”

• Bouncing – Sampling a variety of student responses intentionally and systematically to better map terrain of student thinking: “Take 60 seconds. Talk with your team” or “Anyone have anything to add to that?”

• Probing – Asking follow-up questions that use information from actual student responses: “Based on what you saw around the room, would you stick with that answer?”

• Posing – Asking questions that size up the learner’s needs in the lesson and across the unit: “Why would the 3 x 2 x 4 box have less surface area than the 6 x 4 x 1 box?”

• Binning – Noticing patterns in student responses, categorizing them along learning trajectories, and using responses to inform next steps: The teacher displays several student solutions in correct and incorrect “bins” without disclosing an opinion and asks, “Which are correct?”

• Tagging – Publicly representing variation in student thinking by creating a snapshot or running record of a class’s responses: “So let’s come to an agreement as a group about terms.”

Duckor, Holmberg, and Becker say they hope these moves will help teachers see on-the-spot assessment in a new light so they can “amplify the voices and values of quieter students, particularly those English language learners in middle school math classrooms who too often have been rushed past in the race to the top.”

 

“Making Moves: Formative Assessment in Mathematics” by Brent Duckor, Carrie Holmberg, and Joanne Rossi Becker in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, February 2017 (Vol. 22, #6, p. 334-342), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/2lZb5Eh; the authors can be reached at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

Back to page one

 

 

6. Lesson Study As a Vehicle for Improving Formative Assessments

            In this article in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, Davida Fischman (California State University/San Bernardino) and Kelli Wasserman (a secondary math teacher/consultant) say the Lesson Study process can be helpful in getting teachers to more effectively plan and execute formative/during-the-lesson assessments. Here’s how they have seen this play out in the four stages of Lesson Study in a research project involving 100 grade 4-8 math teachers:

            • Study – A teacher team decides on a particular area of student need; studies the content in depth, including common student errors and misconceptions; designs an assessment and gathers data on their students’ understanding of the content; chooses academic goals and standards; and selects behavioral goals.

            • Plan – The team carefully designs a lesson around the content, based on what they learned about student thinking; anticipates student misconceptions and possible responses; plans strategic points in the lesson at which to assess students; and plans how to adapt instruction based on assessment results.

            • Teach and observe – One teacher teaches the lesson, implementing formative assessments as planned and noticing unplanned student actions and unexpected student errors and misunderstandings; the teacher’s colleagues observe (possibly joined by outside experts) and record evidence of student learning; student work is collected and a video may be made for future reference. “By focusing on observation only (rather than teaching) during the research lesson,” say Fischman and Wasserman, “a teacher-observer hones the ability to listen carefully to students’ comments, observe students’ actions, and discern nuances that might otherwise go unobserved.”

            • Reflect and modify – Teachers share observations, with particular emphasis on how well the lesson plan anticipated students’ needs; look at evidence of student learning; investigate how aspects of the lesson affected student learning and behaviors; think about how the lesson might be improved; and reflect on what might be learned for instructional practice more generally.

            The authors conclude: “The process of lesson study, with its collaborative and supportive culture, is conducive to teachers asking difficult questions and venturing beyond their normal practice to explore new ways of using formative assessment and reflecting on the results… Lesson study slows down the process of teaching, providing time and support for teachers to examine their practice in depth and to develop new skills in a supportive environment.”

 

“Developing Assessment Through Lesson Study” by Davida Fischman and Kelli Wasserman in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, February 2017 (Vol. 22, #6, p. 344-351), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/2lZiuU3; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

Back to page one

 

 

  7. Turn-Ons and Turn-Offs in Preschool Classrooms

            In this New York Times article, David Kirp (University of California/Berkeley) describes walking into a New Jersey preschool classroom and being “sucked in by the hum of activity. Art plastered the walls, plants were hanging from the ceiling, and in every nook there was something to seize a child’s imagination. Some kids were doing cutouts of paper clothing and others were at an easel, painting. A bunch of children were solving puzzles on a computer, while another group was building a pink cardboard chair, which they called ‘A Chair for My Mother.’ In the reading nook a girl was learning about how, when the wasp larva hatches, it eats the spider. Three classmates were playing dress-up, trying on old felt hats and checking themselves out in the mirror. The teacher was everywhere – praising kids, offering suggestions when they were stumped and, sometimes, peacemaking… At that moment, I wished that I were 4 years old and could join the festivities.”

            At the other end of the spectrum are the characteristics of less-effective preschool classrooms. Kirp believes these are warning signs of a preschool that is not good for children:

-   Not enough stations and activities to engage students;

-   Too much emphasis on superficial task demands;

-   Students following detailed directions and being assigned routine tasks;

-   Teachers telling children to color within the lines and not accepting creative responses;

-   Adults yelling at kids or talking at them rather than with them;

-   A classroom that is pin-drop silent;

-   Children running wild (“That stored-up energy belongs on the playground,” says Kirp);

-   Posters on the wall geared to adults and mounted too high for 4-year-olds to see;

-   If visitors are mobbed by kids, that’s not a good sign, says Kirp: “You might consider yourself to be a fascinating person, but you shouldn’t be more interesting than whatever activity these 3- or 4-year-olds are engaged in.”

“For parents,” Kirp concludes, “the bottom line is simple: Watch closely what’s happening in the classroom, pick a preschool that you wish you had gone to, and your child will do just fine.”

 

“Pick a Preschool in Under an Hour” by David Kirp in The New York Times, February 5, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/opinion/sunday/how-to-pick-a-preschool-in-less-than-an-hour.html

Back to page one

 

8. Four Fundamental Questions for Teacher Teams

            In this article in All Things PLC, Robert Eaker (Middle Tennessee State University) and Heather Friziellie (Kildeer Countryside School District, IL) reprise the questions they believe every professional learning community should be asking:

-   What is essential for all students to learn in our subject, grade, or course?

-   How will we monitor the learning of each student – by name – on a frequent and timely basis?

-   How will we respond when students experience difficulty with their learning?

-   How will we extend the learning of students who demonstrate proficiency?

 

“Teacher Collaboration Matters – A Lot” by Robert Eaker and Heather Friziellie in All Things PLC, Winter 2017, no e-link available

Back to page one

 

9. Short Items:

            a. A Holocaust survivor gives his violin to a student in the Bronx – Joe’s Violin, an Oscar-nominated short documentary, is well worth watching. Have some tissues handy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D5h_Y8N4tg

 

“Joe’s Violin” directed and produced by Kahane Cooperman, Lucky Two Productions, 2016

Back to page one

 

            b. Key websites – In this All Things PLC page, Sarah Schuhl recommends the following websites that support effective teamwork and instruction:

            • EDSITEment – www.edsitement.neh.gov has standards-aligned lesson plans, student resources, and close readings in ELA, foreign languages, art and culture, history and social studies.

            • Classkick – https://www.classkick.com is a free formative feedback tool to use with high-level student tasks. The teacher uploads the tasks, has students complete them on a device, and can then view each student’s work and provide feedback.

            • Newsela – www.newsela.com provides topical informational texts at different Lexile levels, some with quizzes and some in Spanish.

            • ReadWorks – www.readworks.org provides informational and literary texts at varying reading levels with question sets, as well as elementary lessons and units on reading comprehension.

            • Literacy Design Collaborative – www.ldc.org has teacher-created lessons and modules geared to college and career readiness in ELA, social studies, science, and math, including task templates, rubrics, and student anchor papers.

            • Illustrative Mathematics – www.illustrativemathematics.org has math tasks geared to Common Core standards.

 

“Websites to PLC By” by Sarah Schuhl in All Things PLC, Winter 2017

Back to page one

 

 

 

© Copyright 2017 Marshall Memo LLC

 

If you have feedback or suggestions,

please e-mail [email protected]

About the Marshall Memo