In This Issue:

  1. What makes a leader uncoachable?

  2. Attitudes that steer young women away from STEM careers

  3. Literature that gets students thinking about ethics and justice

  4. Insights on middle- and high-school study skills

  5. Who’s doing the work here? More-effective grading practices

  6. Teachers working smarter with technology

  7. A teacher’s radical solution to working evenings and weekends

  8. Advice for school librarians on challenges they receive

  9. The efficacy of teaching reading and writing together

10. Teaching for “critical democratic literacy” in social studies

11. Short item: Fifty years of educational polling

 

Quotes of the Week

“Teachers are on the often-chaotic and messy frontlines of education. These soldiers weather ever-mounting demands, need to do 100 things simultaneously yet expertly, sacrifice their evenings and weekends to lesson planning and grading, and must nevertheless serve up an endless supply of joy and love.”

Jenny Grant Rankin in “How to Help Teachers Win the Burnout War” in Educational Leadership, June 2018 (Vol. 75, #9), https://bit.ly/2Kt1Vt7

 

“Having taught To Kill a Mockingbirdto thousands of kids, I can explain the significance of Harper Lee’s novel with this observation: It causes kids to cry out, ‘That’s not fair.’ And from that simple comment comes all the power of literature and all the hope in the world… At the core of Scout’s story is her harsh discovery of unfairness: Tom Robinson is falsely arrested, unfairly tried, unfairly convicted, and then killed. Recognizing unfairness is the engine for empathy and activism, and literature – the great window and mirror – is where it starts for so many of us.”

            Gene Kahane in a letter to The New York Times, July 8, 2018, https://nyti.ms/2LiYlSB

 

“When students move to new schools, they often experience a one- to three-year dip in academic achievement simply because of the school change.”

            Rob Kremer and Matt Wicks in “Performance Frameworks Should Account for Student

            Mobility,” TheEducation Gadfly, July 11, 2018 (Vol. 18, #27), https://bit.ly/2NeBM2c

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. What Makes a Leader Uncoachable? 

            In this Harvard Business Reviewarticle, Matt Brubaker and Chris Mitchell (FMG Leading) say that executive coaching is increasingly popular. “But while executive coaches have improved the performance of many already-good managers and sanded the rough edges off many less-effective ones, they aren’t a miracle cure,” say Brubaker and Mitchell. From their company’s 35 years working with leaders in different fields, they’ve noted the characteristics of people for whom coaching will be a poor investment:

            •They blame external factors for their problems. When things go wrong, these leaders always have excuses – not enough resources, the quality of their team, even their boss. “Conducting a non-judgmental, just-the-facts 360-degree review could help them see the reality of their situation,” say Brubaker and Mitchell. “Until they can see what others see and why it matters, they won’t examine their behavior, and coaching will be useless.” 

            •They don’t see why they need coaching. They are always too busy, and even when they sit down with a coach, they’re not mentally present. “Their inability to prioritize is a sign they need coaching,” say Brubaker and Mitchell, “but their unwillingness to make room for it suggests they won’t be a good coaching investment.”

            •They’re insecure and defensive. They see being assigned a coach as a criticism of their performance (which may be true), and even become angry at the prospect and erect roadblocks like rejecting one coach after another as unqualified. “Reframe coaching as an investment the organization is making in their development,” suggest Brubaker and Mitchell, “rather than a personal fix. Tell them your firm provides this resource for high-potential, top performers to accelerate their success.”  

            •They focus too much on tips and tactics. “Although coaches sometimes offer suggestions,” say Brubaker and Mitchell, “their real job is to help executives uncover the assumptions driving their behavior.” It’s not a good sign when a coachee asks for the secrets of success that others employ, soaking up surface-level change but avoiding “the deeper inquiries required for meaningful transformation. They’re willing to modify behaviors, but not beliefs.” 

 

“4 Signs an Executive Isn’t Ready for Coaching” by Matt Brubaker and Chris Mitchell in Harvard Business Review, July 9, 2018, https://bit.ly/2m63lPJ

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2. Attitudes That Steer Young Women Away from STEM Careers

            In this Wall Street Journalarticle, engineering professor Barbara Oakley (Oakland University, MI) says one reason that relatively few women end up working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is the unthinking and uninformed vibe conveyed by many undergraduate humanities and social sciences instructors [and perhaps by some K-12 educators?]. “Professors have profound influence over students’ career choices,” says Oakley. “I’m sometimes flabbergasted at the level of bias and antagonism toward STEM from professors outside scientific fields. I’ve heard it all: STEM is only for those who enjoy ‘rote’ work. Engineering is not creative. There’s only one right answer. You’ll live your life in a cubicle. It’s dehumanizing. You’ll never talk to anyone. And, of course, it’s sexist… With joking asides during class or more-pointed conversations about careers, the STEM disciplines are caricatured as a gulag for creative types.” 

            Grades can also play a part, and women tend to do better in non-technical subjects. If a young woman is getting an A in English and a C in calculus, she’s more likely to become an English major – especially if the English professors recruit her by bad-mouthing STEM careers. What a shame, says Oakley, because technical fields “can be among the most creative and satisfying disciplines.” 

            But what about sexism in the STEM workplace? Actually, says Oakley, “Jerks exist in every workplace,” with an almost perfect Venn-diagram overlap of jerks and sexists. Take nursing, where studies have documented pervasive bullying; a 2015 study found the full spectrum “from eye-rolling and exclusion to humiliation, withholding information, scapegoating, intimidation, and backstabbing.” 

            “I have experienced bias in my career,” concludes Oakley, “but I also would not be where I am today without the strong support of many wonderful men. Women are vitally important to STEM… And it’s time for everyone to step back, take a breath, and acknowledge that good and bad bosses and co-workers exist everywhere.” 

 

“Why Do Women Shun STEM? It’s Complicated” by Barbara Oakley in The Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/WSJOpinion/posts/951990394981435; Oakley can be reached at [email protected].

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3. Literature That Gets Students Thinking About Ethics and Justice

            “In today’s volatile climate, it is no longer sufficient for students to be passive appreciators of language,” says Suzanne Choo (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) in this Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacyarticle. “Going forward, students should also be equipped to critically evaluate diverse values, explore ethical dilemmas, and engage with issues of global injustice. Literature provides a powerful gateway to such ethical encounters with lived experiences of individuals at various times and places around the world and offers insights into cultures that students may not necessarily have access to.” 

            Choo’s word for literature that accomplishes this is cosmopolitan, giving students the aesthetic, empathetic, and critical skills and dispositions they need to be citizens of a world that is flat, networked, and diverse. Cosmopolitan literature has these characteristics:

-  Openness to differences, the opposite of intolerance;

-  A disposition to break out of a self-centered view of others and the world;

-  Embracing a hybrid identity that crosses national boundaries;

-  Other-centered, focused on understanding and engaging with others;

-  Actively seeking to connect with others.

In short, says Choo, cosmopolitan literature facilitates “critical ethical engagements with diverse cultures and values in our world.” She suggests three ways teachers can use such literature with students:

            • Evaluating characters’ values– Cosmopolitan literature “allows students to observe how characters grow and change in various contexts,” says Choo. “In the process, students are able to reflect on the process of character formation, including their own.” It’s also important for students to explore the historical background in which literary characters operated. For example, Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Nightis lampooned for his puritan behavior, but why was puritanism seen negatively in Elizabethan society? Choo also suggests that teachers include a text that is ethically flawed and use it as a foil for discussion.

            • Exploring ethical dilemmas– Moral dilemmas are vividly brought to life in cosmopolitan literature, and classrooms are a safe space for students to ask questions about these complex, real-life problems. In Margaret Atwood’s short story, “Dancing Girls,” students can grapple with a situation where a person from the Middle East arrives in Canada and is the object of suspicion. High-quality literature raises questions about which characters are good or evil, who determines that, and the author’s stance.

            • Engaging with issues of justice– “One of the central tasks of educators,” says Choo, “is to push students toward higher stages of reasoning in which they increasingly have to adopt a more cosmopolitan, non-parochial perspective, considering questions about fairness and rights of minorities and other individuals whose values and circumstances may be different from their own.” For example, Orwell’s Animal Farmraises issues about how profits should be shared among various contributing members of society, and Haruki Murakami’s short story “The Elephant Vanishes” raises the question of caring for the elderly and others who can no longer contribute to society. “What principles of fairness should be applied then?” asks Choo. “What local and universal laws can ensure the just distribution of wealth and resources, as well as the fair provision of opportunities?” 

            Perspective-taking is powerfully raised in R.J. Palacio’sWonder, with students challenged to explore the world of a boy with facial defects from the point of view of the boy, his sister, his friends, his sister’s boyfriend, and a boy who bullied him. Class discussions of cosmopolitan literature may also lead students to what Choo calls “informed activism” – getting involved in issues of justice within their classrooms, schools, and communities.

 

“The Need for Cosmopolitan Literacy in a Global Age: Implications for Teaching Literature” by Suzanne Choo in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, July/August 2018 (Vol. 62, #1, p. 7-12), https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jaal.755; Choo can be reached at [email protected].

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4. Insights on Middle- and High-School Study Skills 

            “Paying attention, completing homework, and actively participating in discussions all remain important but are insufficient for mastering the increasing academic demands of secondary schooling,” say Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University and Health Sciences High and Middle College) in this Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacyarticle. Middle and high-school teachers may assume that students already know how to study, but in many cases there are major gaps in students’ skills and dispositions. Fisher and Frey cite research on the robust impact of study skills as “a strong, evidence-based accelerant for learning.” The evidence falls into these areas:

-  Study tasks – for example, practice testing, deliberate practice, and organizing knowledge and concepts;

-  Metacognition – monitoring one’s own learning through self-questioning;

-  Dispositions and motivations, including setting goals and planning for study.

“In other words,” say Fisher and Frey, “building study skills requires more than just teaching note-taking or memorization techniques, even though those techniques can help. It requires tapping into students’ dispositions and motivations for study.”

They go on to suggest five areas that especially merit explicit instruction in secondary classrooms:

            •Practice tests– These can be very effective if students get feedback on the results. That’s because they trigger the “retrieval effect” – locating and bringing information to mind, which strengthens long-term memory. Retrieval also makes students metacognitively aware of the current status of their knowledge, giving them a realistic sense of what they know and what needs more study.

• Distributed practice– Retrieving information at intervals over several days is far more effective than rereading or highlighting. In fact, rereading may make things worse by giving students the feeling that they know the material without realizing that their ability to retrieve information hasn’t improved. “[N]o athlete would think that one long practice session just before a match or game would be wise,” say Fisher and Frey. “Practices occur on regularly scheduled intervals, and study sessions require the same condition.” 

            •Study context– Study skills should be taught in the subject area in which they will be used – for example, Cornell notes in social studies classes. 

• Distraction during study– Studies have shown that today’s adolescents rarely study more than 9-10 minutes without being interrupted by their devices – yet they believe they’re “focused.” These distractions, along with the myth of multitasking, take their toll, both on the quality of study and students’ anxiety about not having enough time. Fisher and Frey believe the best approach is to challenge students to turn their devices off for 15 minutes when they study, then treat themselves to a one-minute technology check, then get back to work – and gradually expand the tech-free window over time.

• Metacognition– Fisher and Frey suggest sharing research about study skills with students so they understand and are empowered to use recent insights about what works and what doesn’t.

 

“The Enduring Value of Study Skills” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, July/August 2018 (Vol. 62, #1, p. 119-122), 

https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jaal.759; the authors can be reached at [email protected]and [email protected]. 

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5. Who’s Doing the Work Here? More-Effective Grading Practices

(Originally titled “Teaching Smarter”)

            In this Educational Leadershiparticle, Glen Pearsall says a major blind spot in educational research and school improvements initiatives is the burnout-producing amount of work teachers are doing – especially grading student work. The sad thing is that all too often, when students get their work back, they glance at the grade and file it away. With the teachers he coaches, Pearsall tries to short-circuit this dynamic by asking:

-  Would establishing a clear learning objective up front focus students’ efforts and cut down on correcting errors and misconceptions later on?

-  Could you ask questions during each lesson that get you feedback without students putting pen to paper?

-  Could on-the-spot assessment techniques display learning problems and allow you to nip them in the bud?

-  Could you make the correcting workload quicker for you and more effective for students?

-  Could students take a more active role in catching and understanding their errors?

On the last item, Pearsall has some specific suggestions:

• Minimalist marking– The teacher addresses selected issues or sections of students’ work and has them take responsibility for others: 

-  A dot or dash in the margin tells the student there’s an error in that line that has to be located and corrected.

-  Students get a subtotal mark on each segment of a piece of work and are responsible for improving low-marked sections. 

-  The teacher annotates a paper as usual and the student summarizes the advice.

-  The teacher corrects and closely annotates a representative portion of the student’s work, then the student improves the rest of the work based on that feedback.

• Student-referenced grades– Instead of giving letter or percent grades, the teacher marks students’ work with three symbols:

= means the work is on par with the student’s previous work on the topic;

> means the work is better than previous work on the topic;

< means the work is less proficient than previous work on the topic.

This focuses students on improving their own work versus comparing themselves to peers. 

• Students annotating feedback– When Pearsall circulated around his class giving verbal feedback, he would stamp a message on the sections of students’ work he’d addressed and students had to write a summary of the feedback he had given. This reinforced the advice he’d given and increased students’ ownership and follow-up. 

• Identifying error patterns– Students get their corrected work back and use a chart of common errors to analyze the types of problems they’re having. For example, students might look at a math paper to see whether errors were computational or conceptual. “In my experience,” says Pearsall, “this makes students much more likely to recognize error types themselves and to work harder on addressing these gaps in their understanding. It also reduces the total time spent marking up student work.” 

 

“Teaching Smarter” by Glen Pearsall in Educational Leadership, June 2018 (Vol. 75, #9),

https://bit.ly/2IDjPYs; Pearsall can be reached at [email protected]. 

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6. Teachers Working Smarter with Technology

(Originally titled “To Stem Teacher Burnout, Go Digital”)

            In this Educational Leadershiparticle, teacher/author/speaker Catlin Tucker says “the traditional teacher-led, teacher-paced approach to instruction does not afford teachers time to do much beyond delivering lessons during the actual school day.” This means the work of correcting papers and giving students feedback ends up getting done evenings and weekends. We need to shift our mindset, says Tucker. If students do more of the work during class time, they’ll have more ownership of their learning and learn more, and teachers won’t burn out. She suggests several ways technology can help:

            •Students creating learning tools– Last year, Tucker saw that her high-school students needed improvement on academic vocabulary. Her first impulse was to record a vocabulary video for her classes, but then she stopped herself and shifted the work to students. She had them pair up, choose an academic vocabulary term, record a short video on their Chromebooks using Screencastify, and watch each others’ videos. Then students used Quizlet to create electronic flashcards to review the words. 

            •Students co-creating assignments– For a unit on sustainability, Tucker had students identify a real-world challenge that interested them, and students used FlipGrid, a video discussion platform, to record a 90-second project “pitch” that she reviewed, tweaked as needed, and approved. Once students got the green light, they logged into Google Classroom, opened a project overview form Tucker had prepared, established a timeline for their work, identified materials and resources, assigned responsibilities, set up a timeline, and checked in with her as they proceeded.

            •In-class feedback and assessment – One model Tucker uses is having students rotate through a series of online and offline stations while she provides immediate feedback on students’ work at one of the stations. If students are writing an essay or working on a formal lab report in Google Docs, she can make edits and leave written comments to support them as they write. Using the app Kaizena, she can record voice comments on written work, sometimes attaching links to how-to videos to help students revise their work.

            •Including parents as an audience– When students post their work on the app Seesaw, their parents get a text or e-mail notification, view the work, and respond with voice or text comments inside the platform. It’s motivating to students when they’re urged to make their work “Seesaw-worthy.” Tucker has her high-school students create digital portfolios using Google Sites, organizing and displaying their multimedia work to reflect what they’re learning. Organizing and archiving students’ work is their responsibility, not Tucker’s.

            • Online professional enrichment– It’s easy for busy teachers to become isolated from their colleagues, says Tucker, perhaps falling into an instructional rut. She advocates using social media to reach out to a broader network of professional colleagues. Far from being an extra burden, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and other 24/7 platforms can save time as teachers share lesson ideas, materials, resources, and practical advice. Tucker urges principals to eschew traditional PD meetings in favor of weaving professional learning “into the fabric of the school day with trainings, coaching, and professional learning communities that can support continuous experimentation and iteration.”

 

“To Stem Teacher Burnout, Go Digital” by Catlin Tucker in Educational Leadership, June 2018 (Vol. 75, #9), https://bit.ly/2MpS2N6;

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7. A Teacher’s Radical Solution to Working Evenings and Weekends

(Originally titled “Always Find Time for Family”)

            In this Educational Leadership article, Alexis Wiggins says that over ten years teaching high-school English, she took home lots of work, but raising two children, “I suddenly found my job impossible.” A veteran colleague suggested, Never take any work home,and Wiggins took her advice, using prep time strategically, socializing less with colleagues, and staying late Friday evenings (her husband handled the kids). “Evenings never seem a chore anymore thanks to my learned commitment to leave work at work.” 

 

“Always Find Time for Family” by Alexis Wiggins in Educational Leadership, June 2018 (Vol. 75, #9), https://bit.ly/2NTE9IW; Wiggins can be reached at [email protected].

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8. Advice for School Librarians on Challenges They Receive

            In this School Library Journalarticle, Pat Scales answers several questions she received from educators:

            • Parents object when a middle-school social studies teacher requires students to bring in articles about an event in the news, saying it encourages political conversation. “This assignment shouldn’t be changed because parents complained,” says Scales. Of course teachers should make sure multiple viewpoints are represented and avoid discussing their own political views. But social studies “is where current events belong… [I]t is important for students to know what is going on in the community, the nation, and world. Lessons on current events are a good way to help students become discerning learners.” With this type of activity, teachers should ensure that all students have access to articles through the library and online. 

            • A school’s sixth-grade teachers are uncomfortable sending out a list of suggested summer readings to incoming students, arguing that they don’t know the students yet and might get challenges to suggested readings. Scales says that when she was a school librarian, she went to elementary feeder schools and presented rising sixth graders with a letter welcoming them to middle school. Attached to the letter was a suggested list of 10-15 annotated titles in fantasy, science fiction, adventure, mystery, realism, nonfiction, and poetry to read over the summer. “This worked so well that a number of parents whose fifth graders were zoned for other middle schools called and asked if they could get a copy of the reading lists,” she says. “There were so many reading choices that I never had a censorship problem.” 

            • The mother of a rising sixth grader is upset that the middle school isn’t using Accelerated Reader, which her child’s elementary school used to test comprehension and keep track of the books each child read. Accelerated Reader has its place, says Scales, “but an excellent literature program teaches students to think more deeply about books, including character analysis, theme, plot structure, and language use.” She adds that if students are “tested on every book they read, they are likely to be turned off to reading.” 

            • A high-school principal tells his school librarian not to mention Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to students as part of media training. “Like it or not, high-school students use social media,” says Scales. There are legitimate concerns about bullying, name-calling, intimidation, and more, but students and their parents need instruction and clear guidelines and the school should decide on the best venue for it, perhaps enlisting the help of the parent organization. 

 

“Scales on Censorship: Summer Reading Challenged” by Pat Scales in School Library Journal, July 2018 (Vol. 64, #7, p. 15), no e-link; Scales can be reached at [email protected].

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9. The Efficacy of Teaching Reading and Writing Together

            In this article in Reading Research Quarterly, Steve Graham (Australian Catholic University and Arizona State University) and six colleagues report on their meta-analysis of 38 studies on teaching PreK-12 reading and writing in tandem. “Because they draw on common sources of knowledge and cognitive processes, involve meaning making, and can be used conjointly to accomplish important learning goals,” say the authors, “it is often recommended that reading and writing should be taught together.” But what does the research show? Here are their findings on:

-  Reading – Balanced reading/writing instruction has a strongly positive effect on reading achievement from preschool through high school, with gains in overall performance, comprehension, word decoding, and vocabulary.

-  Writing – The meta-analysis found similar gains in students’ overall writing proficiency, writing quality, writing mechanics, and writing output. 

However, several balanced programs boosted reading but not writing proficiency: Writing to Read, whole language, and cooperative learning programs. These anomalies could be the result of the studies’ characteristics, said the authors, or of the greater emphasis placed on reading in schools implementing those programs.

The bottom line: “[L]iteracy programs balancing reading and writing instruction can enhance reading and writing performance,” say the authors. But not all programs are equally effective. In addition, “The findings from this meta-analysis should not be interpreted as implying that it is a mistake to devote separate time to teaching reading and writing. Although reading and writing are closely correlated and draw on shared knowledge and cognitive processes, they are not identical skills. They can also be learned separately.” 

 

“Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis” by Steve Graham, Xinghua Liu, Angelique Aitken, Clarence Ng, Brendan Bartlett, Karen Harris, and Jennifer Holzapfel in Reading Research Quarterly, July/August/September 2018 (Vol. 53, #3, p. 279-304), https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/rrq.194; Graham can be reached at [email protected].

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10. Teaching for “Critical Democratic Literacy” in Social Studies 

            In this Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacyarticle, Melissa Leigh Gibson (Marquette University) says the traditional approach to teaching social studies “emphasizes the transfer of information over the construction of knowledge.” This approach, she argues, can reinforce national myths, obscure a clear understanding of social context, and fail to prepare students for 21^st-century citizenship. “In the face of growing social inequality, political incivility, and social media influence,” she avers, “social studies classes must equip students with critical skills to read and act in their social contexts.” 

            From her research and years teaching in Mexico, Gibson suggests some big-picture Essential Questions for social studies classes:

-  Can I trust this source?

-  What is the evidence?

-  Whose perspective does this represent?

-  Where is the bias?

-  Whose voice is missing?

-  How would this narrative change if told from a different perspective?

-  Is this a logical conclusion based on the evidence?

-  What is the enduring legacy of this narrative?

“We may not always like our students’ conclusions,” Gibson says, “but it is important to remember that… [w]e are teaching students how to think rather than what to think.”

 

“Scaffolding Critical Questions: Learning to Read the World in a Middle School Civics Class in Mexico” by Melissa Leigh Gibson in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, July/August 2018 (Vol. 62, #1, p. 25-34),https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jaal.735; Gibson can be reached at [email protected].

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11. Short Item:

            Fifty years of educational polling – At this link http://pdkpoll.org/timeline, former Phi Delta Kappaneditor Joan Richardson (now in charge of polling for PDK) compiles key findings from the last five decades of results from the annual Kappan poll of U.S. attitudes toward education, along with salient events in the nation each year. In addition, Richardson has posted an article on the history of the poll: http://pdkpoll.org/history. 

 

“Fifty Years of American Voices” at Phi Delta Kappan, July 12, 2018; Richardson can be reached at [email protected]. 

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