In This Issue:

1. A program to enhance principals’ instructional leadership

2. What’s up with “you guys”?

3. Jennifer Gonzalez on getting to know students

4. What effective feedback looks like

5. The ask-tell-ask approach to feedback conversations

6. What makes an authentic performance task?

7. Building in success with performance tasks

8. Assessing readers and boosting students’ reading volume

9. Curriculum standards in non-Common Core states

 

Quotes of the Week

“At that moment, I realized I didn’t really know my students at all.” 

            Jennifer Gonzalez on learning that one of her students was homeless (see item #3)

 

“Students now spend hours a day interacting with texts, tweets, and social media. At the very time when newer standards demand that students think and read texts more deeply and carefully, your students come to you with less practice doing so… They have been trained to swipe as soon as they get bored.”

            John Scudder in “Making History Relevant for the Social Media Generation” in 

Education Week Teacher, August 22, 2018, https://bit.ly/2LpSx9l

 

“[W]e must remember that standards are only words on paper if they don’t inspire stellar instruction in the classroom.”

            Amber Northern and Michael Petrilli (see item #9)

 

“What if unions mounted a ‘children’s campaign’ aimed at ensuring all young people have access to health, mental health, dental care, stable housing, safe neighborhoods, and various other essentials for well-being? What if unions campaigned for all children, irrespective of wealth, to have access to early-childhood education, after-school and summer learning, athletics, the arts, tutoring, access to tools of technology, internships – in short, all the enrichment opportunities that those of us who have privilege routinely provide for our children?... Unions could fully embrace the new, grass-roots organizing for better pay and school funding, while at the same time prioritizing a children’s equity and opportunity agenda, thereby becoming leaders in the fight for universal student success.”

            Paul Reville in “Teachers’ Unions Must Decide Their Future” in Education Week, 

August 22, 2018, https://bit.ly/2wonhlr; Reville is at [email protected].

 

“Even if guysis widely regarded as gender-neutral, there will still be a sizable contingent of conscientious objectors.” 

            Joe Pinsker (see item #2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. A Program to Enhance Principals’ Instructional Leadership 

            In this paper, Ellen Goldring, Jason Grissom, Mollie Rubin, Laura Rogers, and Michael Neel (Vanderbilt University) and Melissa Clark (Mathematica Policy Research) report the results of the four-year, $24 million Principal Supervisor Initiative. Launched by the Wallace Foundation, the program aimed to improve the quality of principal supervision and support in six urban school districts: Broward County, Florida; Baltimore, Maryland; Cleveland, Ohio; Des Moines, Iowa; Long Beach, California; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The initiative asked districts to implement these changes:

-  Making each supervisor of principals responsible for a network of only about 12 schools;

-  Modifying supervisors’ job descriptions to focus on instructional leadership;

-  Training supervisors and developing their capacity to support principals;

-  Developing apprenticeship systems to identify and train new supervisors of principals (succession planning);

-  Restructuring the central office to support and sustain changes in the role of principal supervisors.

The “motivating hypothesis” of the initiative, say the authors, was that by shifting the role of principal supervisors from administration, operations, and compliance to instructional leadership, principals would become more effective and classroom teaching and student learning would improve. The vision was that supervisors would be in schools much more frequently (spending about half their time in schools, with each principal having a school visit perhaps every two weeks), observing classrooms, looking at instructional data, intensively coaching principals on the finer points of being instructional leaders, organizing peer observations within the network, and leading their network of principals in collaborative discussions. 

            The report found that the initiative has been successful in shifting the role of supervisors and improving the quantity and quality of support that principals receive. The authors also found that some or all of the districts needed continued focus in:

-  Developing a common definition of instructional leadership;

-  Balancing time supervisors spend in the central office with time they are in schools;

-  Ensuring high-quality coaching and support among all supervisors;

-  Differentiating support for principals with varied needs;

-  Minimizing disruptive changes in supervisor/principal relationships;

-  Developing internal capacity to provide high-quality, job-embedded training and support for supervisors;

-  Developing and refining approaches to identify and train new supervisors;

-  Continuing to shift central-office departments toward a school-centered culture;

-  Maintaining momentum in the changes to the principal supervisors’ role;

-  Improving the process used to evaluate principals.

 

“A New Role Emerges for Principal Supervisors: Evidence from Six Districts in the Principal Supervisor Initiative” by Ellen Goldring, Jason Grissom, Mollie Rubin, Laura Rogers, Michael Neel, and Melissa Clark from Valderbilt University and Mathematica  Policy Research, July 2018, https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/a-new-role-emerges-for-principal-supervisors.aspx

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2. What’s Up with “You Guys”?

            In this article in The Atlantic, Joe Pinsker examines the widespread practice of using greetings like “Hey, guys” and “Okay, guys” with male-female groups. “Guysis an easygoing way to address a group of people,” says Pinsker, noting that lots of people, including many women, have no problem being addressed as “guys” and believe the word has evolved to be gender-neutral. 

It turns out there’s a 400-year history behind the word. Guyoriginated with Guy Fawkes, the infamous plotter who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605, was caught guarding the explosives, and broke his neck falling off the scaffold before he could be executed. “The word’s meaning radiated outward from there,” reports Pinsker, “encompassing larger and larger groups. It started to be used to signify any effigy, then any fearsome person and/or any man. And then, in the plural, it came to mean – in the U.S. sometime around 100 years ago – just about anyone. Many, perhaps even most, American English speakers view this evolution as a process of shedding gendered connotations.” 

Childis another English word with a history of shifting its gender connotation. In Old English, it was gender-neutral and remained so for several centuries. It then took on a male meaning in Northern England and Scotland, then a female meaning in other English dialects, and then mostly returned to being gender-neutral. 

John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University, believes guysas a gender-neutral term has irreversible momentum. “People are going to continue referring to women as guys,” he says, “and a lot of people doing it are going to be women.” But he agrees that the word continues to have a male “flavor.” The question is, “How do you feel about it?” 

Pinsker says there are some strong feelings on the issue. To many, the use of guyswith mixed-gender groups is “a symbol of exclusion – a word with an original male meaning that is frequently used to refer to people who don’t consider themselves ‘guys’… In the course of reporting this story, I heard from teachers who wanted a better way to get students’ attention, an ice-cream scooper who wanted a better way to greet customers, and a debate coach who specifically encourages his students to use y’all.These are representative of a broad coalition of people who have contemplated, and often gone through with, excising guysfrom their vocabularies.” One teacher with a sense of irony drew attention to the issue by sometimes addressing her class as ladiesor gals.

            Pinsker found the pushback goes back at least to 2002, when sociologist Sherryl Kleinman wrote in Qualitative Sociologythat terms like chairman,congressman, mankind, and of course you guyswere “another indicator – and, more importantly, a reinforcer – of a system in which ‘man’ in the abstract and men in the flesh are privileged over women.” Kleinman even printed up cards for people to leave in restaurants when someone addressed a mixed-gender group as “you guys.” Pinsker notes two contemporary situations where guysis getting the strongest pushback. In male-dominated tech companies, the term is “yet another symptom of a female-minimizing industry,” and for transgender women and gender-nonconforming people, it can be a painful reminder of something they want to leave behind. 

Pinsker reports that those who resist the generic use of guyshave found ways to push back without being confrontational. A group of government employees has a custom response to a Slack message, asking, “Did you mean friends?” The professional network Ladies Get Paid introduced a similar feature in its Slack group of 30,000 members. Several teachers told Pinsker that they’d switched to scholarsor other greetings. A 26-year-old urban planner in the Bay Area changed his greeting five years ago after considering “how much our language centers men,” concluding that guysis “lazy and inconsiderate” except when addressing people who clearly identify as male. 

The underlying problem is that the English language doesn’t have a convenient second-person plural pronoun that’s gender-neutral like the Spanish ustedesor the German ihr. “One might cobble together a mix of pronouns to deploy in different scenarios,” says Pinsker, “but no one term can do it all.” Some candidates, with their downsides:

-  Folksis inclusive and warm, but can come across as affected and forced. 

-  Peoplecan seem pushy and impersonal. 

-  Teamtries for camaraderie but wears thin after a while. 

-  Guisefor written greetings is definitely obscure.

-  Comradeshas a distinctly leftist tone. 

-  Y’allhas many passionate backers, says Pinsker. It’s inviting, inclusive, and monosyllabic, but also informal and has regional associations many can’t handle. And it’s definitely a term one wouldn’t use in a board meeting. 

“Even if guysis widely regarded as gender-neutral,” concludes Pinsker, “there will still be a sizable contingent of conscientious objectors. They argue, not incorrectly, that dropping guystakes very little effort, and any awkwardness that comes with the odd folksor friendsor y’all seems far preferable to making a listener feel ignored.” He’s started using you all as an all-purpose greeting. It has some of the advantages of y’allwithout being tied to a particular region, and he’s happy with it. 

 

“The Problem with ‘Hey Guys’” by Joe Pinsker in The Atlantic, August 23, 2018, 

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/08/guys-gender-neutral/568231/

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3. Jennifer Gonzalez on Getting to Know Students

            In the first of these two Cult of Pedagogyarticles, Jennifer Gonzalez describes her growing frustration with a particular seventh-grade boy. His squirrelly behavior was getting on her nerves, and she responded with reprimands and lunch detention. But then the guidance counselor mentioned that the boy’s family was homeless and had been living in a shelter for the last two months. “At that moment,” says Gonzalez, “I realized I didn’t really know my students at all.” After shifting her approach with this boy, she decided to be much more systematic about building relationships with her students at the beginning of each school year. Here’s what she recommends:

            •Part 1: Break the ice. Of course not all icebreakers are effective, says Gonzalez. Some ask students to take massive social risks with peers they don’t know very well; some don’t actually facilitate familiarity; and some are cheesy. Here are three she has found to be effective:

-  Lines and Blobs – Students are asked to line up in alphabetical order by their first names; line up in alphabetical order by their last names; gather with people who have the same eye color; gather with people who get to school in the same way (car, bus, bike, skateboard, walk); line up in order of birthdays; line up in order of how many languages they speak; gather in three blobs: those who have lots of chores at home, a few, or none; gather with people who have the same favorite season. With these activities, says Gonzalez, students quickly discover things they have in common, don’t have to come up with anything clever, and are on their feet, moving, and talking.

-  Concentric Circles– Students get into two equal circles, one inside the other, face a classmate in the other circle, and each pair answers a get-to-know-you question, then rotates clockwise/counterclockwise to the next person and repeats the process. Some possible questions: Do you play any sports? If so, which ones? Do you consider yourself shy or outgoing? Why? What is the last movie you saw? Did you like it? Describe your perfect dinner. What would you do with a million dollars? What is one thing you’re good at? This activity generates lots of one-to-one conversations and helps students quickly feel at home in the classroom. 

-  This or That– The teacher poses a question (for example, Which animal makes a better pet, a dog or a cat?) and students move to a corner of the room with people who have the same opinion and talk about why they made that choice. “This game has always been a hugehit with any group I’ve ever taught,” says Gonzalez: “It builds student confidence with talking in front of their peers, it helps students quickly find kindred spirits, and it’s also just a lot of fun.” Other possible questions: Would you rather live in the country or the city? Should all students be required to learn a second language? Which is worse, bad breath or body odor? Would you rather be indoors or outdoors? Which is better, playing sports or watching sports? Would you rather travel every single day or never leave home?

• Part 2: Take inventory. Gonzalez has students fill out an information sheet that includes questions on favorite music, books, hobbies, and sports, also health and allergy issues, technology they have at home, whether they divide their time between two households, responsibilities inside and outside their home, and what’s competing for their time. It’s also important to confirm how to pronounce students’ names and what they prefer to be called.

• Part 3: Store the data. Gonzalez recommends creating a spreadsheet to make it easy to access the information (students’ names are on the vertical axis, key information on the other – for example, passions, family, pets, activities, academics, food and drink, skills, miscellaneous). Having all this information for each class is helpful to differentiate or jazz up a particular lesson or just to refresh one’s memory on students who are flying under the radar. 

• Part 4: Check in with students. Gonzalez recommends doing at least one more survey during the year, asking different questions – how are things going for them, how they feel about class procedures and rules, whether assignments seem fair, and how challenged they feel. She also recommends throwing in open-ended questions like, “What would you like to see more of in this class?” and “What else should I know?” (See the first article link below for questionnaires she’s created.)

 

“A 4-Part System for Getting to Know Your Students” by Jennifer Gonzalez in The Cult of Pedagogy, July 10, 2016, and “Icebreakers That Rock” by Jennifer Gonzalez, July 23, 2015, https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/relationship-building/and https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/classroom-icebreakers/

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4. What Effective Feedback Looks Like

            If a teacher says, “I give my students effective feedback, but they don’t do anything with it,” something is wrong, says author/consultant Tom Schimmer in this Solution Tree Assessment Center article. He believes several elements spur student reflection, ownership, and improvement, and this applies to teacher-to-student feedback, student-to-teacher, or coach-to-adult, and is helpful in a variety of feedback formats – face-to-face, written, or digital. Good feedback is:

            • Goal referenced– The intended learning outcome or standard needs to be front and center for affirmations and correctives to be focused and effective.

            • Clear on next steps– “Effective coaches focus on what’s next,” says Schimmer.  “This focus on growth allows learners to concentrate on what comes next to improve their practice.”

            • Actionable– Saying “Good job!” “86 percent” or “You made a mistake here” won’t have much impact. Feedback needs to be concrete, specific, and move the recipient forward. 

            • Personal– Using the recipient’s name conveys that the person giving feedback has looked at the work or performance and has a personal message. It’s also helpful to affirm what the student knows and has done well up to this point.

            • Timely– This goes for how quickly recipients get feedback as well as building in time for them to reflect and follow up. Timeliness is especially important when students misunderstand an assignment or demonstrate misconceptions as they work. Providing rubrics and setting up structures for self-assessment also help nip problems in the bud.

            • User-friendly– Schimmer advises against overwhelming students with too much technical information on standards. Instead, redirect them with questions like, “Why did you make the choice to solve it this way?” or “Can you think of another way to present this information?” The key is students understanding the standards and being able to apply them to the task. 

            • Ongoing– “[A]ssessment is a conversation between teacher and student,” says Schimmer. There’s a continuing back-and-forth as students make errors and either fix the problems themselves or get corrective feedback from the teacher. 

            • Manageable– Timing, sensitivity, and giving feedback in bite-sized chunks are important to the feedback being received and acted upon. Not everything has to be addressed at once, since there will be other at-bats. Some questions to keep in mind:

-  Are students absorbing the feedback?

-  Do they understand the next step they need to take?

-  Do they have the tools and resources to be reach proficiency?

-  Do they believe the goal is attainable?

-  How’s their self-confidence and self-efficacy?

 

“The Nonnegotiable Attributes of Effective Feedback” by Tom Schimmer in The Solution Tree Assessment Center, 2018, no e-link available

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5. The Ask-Tell-Ask Approach to Feedback Conversations

            In this article in Communiqué, Tracy Cruise (Western Illinois University) comments on the time-honored “sandwich” approach to giving supervisory feedback (constructive feedback inserted between two positive comments). The intent is to cushion the impact of criticism, says Cruise, but the “baloney sandwich” can come across as contrived, insincere, and manipulative. The recipient might hear the unspoken subtext to be, “I’ll start with some positive feedback to relax you, and then give you the negative feedback, which is the real purpose of our meeting. I’ll end with more positive feedback so you won’t be so disappointed or angry at me when you leave my office.” 

            Cruise suggests a better approach based on the work of Cantillon and Sargeant (2008). Although her audience is school psychologists, this might be used by school leaders as well. 

-  The supervisor asks the supervisee what was effective about the observed performance. 

-  The supervisor notes areas of agreement and elaborates on positive performance.

-  The supervisee is asked to say what could have been improved.

-  The supervisor affirms possible improvements and makes recommendations. 

Here’s how this might play out in a school psychologist’s meeting with a supervisor:

-  Supervisor: What parts of the meeting went well?

-  Supervisee: My review of the assessment results was consistent with the teacher’s and parents’ observations of the student.

-  Supervisor: I agree, you presented your results clearly and concisely. You also sought feedback from those present about how the results matched their perceptions. What do you think could be improved?

-  Supervisee: I felt like I had to defend myself when they attacked me, and I should have maintained better composure.

-  Supervisor: Yes, as a young psychologist, parents may question your experience or age, but what do you think they were wanting to know? I think sometimes if you can consider what the parents may be concerned about (in this case, if you were able to relate to them or their child), it helps to reframe their questions and may keep you from feeling defensive.

“This approach fosters self-awareness and gives the supervisor insight into the supervisee’s perceptions of performance, interpretations of causality, and ability to problem-solve for correction,” says Cruise. “In comparison to the sandwich method, this procedure is learner-centered and creates shared responsibility for the feedback process.” 

 

“Supervision: Feedback and Evaluation” by Tracy Cruise in Communiqué, September 2018 (Vol. 47, #1, p. 4, 6), no e-link available; Cruise can be reached at [email protected]. 

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6. What Makes an Authentic Performance Task?

            In this Edutopiaarticle, John Larmer (Buck Institute for Education) asks us to decide whether each of the three performance tasks below is fully authentic(students are doing work that connects directly to their lives and has real-world impact or use); somewhat authentic(students do work that simulates what happens in the real world, take on roles, are placed in a scenario that reflects real events, and create products like those people really use); or not authentic(the task is purely academic, with the teacher and perhaps classmates as the audience, doesn’t resemble the kind of work done in the world outside school, and has no potential to have real impact): 

-  Students learn about endangered species in their region and take action to protect them, including a public awareness campaign, habitat restoration field work, and communication with local government officials.

-  Students design and create a calendar with pictures and information about endangered species which they sell at a community event, donating the money to an environmental organization.

-  Students play the role of scientists who need to make recommendations to an environmental organization about how to protect endangered species in various ecosystems around the world.

To authenticity “purists”, says Larmer, only the first (and perhaps the second) qualifies as a good performance task. But he believes all three are fully or somewhat authentic. Here are four ways he believes a project can be authentic: 

            • It meets a real need in the world beyond the classroom, or the products students create are used by real people. Some examples: Students propose designs for a new play area in a neighborhood park. Students plan and execute an environmental cleanup effort in their community. Students create a website for young people about books they like. Students write a guide and produce podcasts for visitors to historic sites. Students serve as consultants to local businesses, advising them on how to increase sales to young people. Students develop a conflict resolution plan for their school. 

            • It focuses on a problem, issue, or topic that’s relevant to students’ lives or an issue that is actually being faced by adults connected to students’ present or future lives. Some examples: Students create multimedia presentations exploring the question, How do we make and lose friends? Students learn physics by investigating the question, Why don’t I fall off my skateboard? Students form a task force to study possible effects of climate change on their community and recommend action steps. Students decide whether the U.S. should intervene in a humanitarian crisis in another country. 

            • It sets up a scenario that is realistic, even if it’s fictional. Some examples: Students are asked by the Archbishop of Mexico in 1819 to recommend a location for the next mission in California. Students act as architects designing a theater that holds a certain number of people, given constraints on land area, cost, safety, and comfort. Students play the role of United Nations advisors to a country that has just overthrown a dictator and needs advice on establishing a democratic government. Students recommend which planet in our solar system should be explored by the next space probe and compete for NASA funding. Students are asked to propose ideas for a new reality TV show that educates viewers about science topics such as evolutionary biology.

            • The project involves tools, tasks, standards, and processes used by adults in real settings and by professionals in the workplace. Some examples: The students doing the skateboard project above test various surfaces for speed, using the scientific method and appropriate scientific tools. The students on the friendship project conduct surveys, analyze data, record video interviews, and use online editing tools to put together their presentations. The students acting as U.N. advisors analyze existing constitutions, write formal reports, and present recommendations to a panel.

 

“What Does It Take for a Project to Be ‘Authentic’?” by John Larmer in Edutopia, June 5, 2012, https://www.edutopia.org/blog/authentic-project-based-learning-john-larmer

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7. Building in Success with Performance Tasks

            In this Edutopiaarticle, John Larmer (Buck Institute for Education) says he’s worked with teachers whose performance tasks seemed to be going smoothly, with high student engagement, but then the end result was disappointing. To get better results, he advises teachers to ask themselves these questions:

-  Did I use rubrics and exemplars to help students understand the quality of work expected?

-  Were there effective on-the-spot formative assessments as the project progressed?

-  Did students have enough time to revise and polish their work?

-  Did the project feel authentic enough to motivate students? Did they care?

-  Does my classroom and my school cultivate a culture of quality?

 

“How to Get High-Quality Student Work in PBL” by John Larmer in Edutopia, October 7, 2013, https://www.edutopia.org/blog/high-quality-student-work-pbl-john-larmer

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8. Assessing Readers and Boosting Students’ Reading Volume

            In their book on nurturing confident and capable readers, literacy experts Stephanie Harvey and Annie Ward share the behaviors, attitudes, and understandings of a thriving reader in four key areas. The student:

Personal:

-  Identifies as a reader with an active reading life;

-  Seeks and finds appealing reading material;

-  Reads voluminously with confidence, engagement, and a critical eye.

Social/cultural:

-  Participates in a community of readers;

-  Expands understanding through discussion with other readers;

-  Draws on his or her own cultural perspective as a meaning-making strength.

Thinking:

-  Approaches reading as a meaning-making process;

-  Monitors comprehension while reading;

-  Engages in critical, strategic thinking to learn, understand, and act.

Language:

-  Understands that reading is supposed to make sense and sound like language;

-  Brings home language and culture to every reading transaction;

-  Understands the purposes and characteristics of genre.

Reinforcing the third characteristic (reads voluminously), Harvey and Ward quote “9 Reasons to Read More,” a research-based list from from Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Mattersby Kylene Beers and Robert Probst (Scholastic, 2017). Reading a lot:

-  Builds knowledge;

-  Improves achievement;

-  Increases motivation;

-  Increases vocabulary;

-  Improves writing;

-  Builds background knowledge;

-  Improves understanding of text structures;

-  Develops empathy;

-  Develops personal identity.

 

From Striving to Thrivingby Stephanie Harvey and Annie Ward (Scholastic, 2017); Ward can be reached at [email protected]. 

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9. Curriculum Standards in Non-Common Core States

            In this Education Gadflyarticle, Amber Northern and Michael Petrilli recap the findings of a new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute on ELA and math learning standards in the states that never adopted Common Core standards, or tweaked them. Panels of independent experts reviewed state standards in each subject area, rating quality and rigor on a 10-point scale. Here’s how the states fared, along with those that adopted Common Core:

English Language Arts:

-  Strong:  States using Common Core

-  Good:  Indiana, Kansas, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, West Virginia

-  Weak:  Arizona, South Carolina, Texas, Nebraska, Tennessee

-  Inadequate:  Missouri, Virginia

Mathematics:

-  Strong:  States using Common Core, Texas

-  Good:  Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia

-  Weak:  Minnesota, North Carolina, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma

-  Inadequate:  Pennsylvania

The Fordham report includes specific recommendations for each state. 

            The big picture is that curriculum standards are strong or good in the vast majority of states – a marked improvement from a decade ago. “Still,” conclude Northern and Petrilli, “we must remember that standards are only words on paper if they don’t inspire stellar instruction in the classroom. On that front, there is clearly much more to be done…” And even in Common Core states, they say, there’s confusion on several questions, including:

-  Does Common Core expect young students to learn history, science, and other subjects as part of becoming better readers? (Yes)

-  Do the standards require high-school English teachers to ditch classic works of literature? (No)

-  Does Common Core want early-grade students to master their math facts? (Yes)

 

“The Perils of Revising the Common Core” by Amber Northern and Michael Petrilli in The Education Gadfly, August 22, 2018 (Vol. 18, #33), https://bit.ly/2LpKNnI; the full report, The State of State Standards Post-Common Core, is at https://edexcellence.net/publications/the-state-of-state-of-standards-and-the-common-core-in-2010.html; it includes a clickable feature on each state’s standards.

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