In This Issue:

  1. Starting with why

  2. Paul Bambrick-Santoyo on effective instructional coaching

  3. A troubling analysis of data-driven instruction

  4. The “underserved third” in high schools

  5. Teachers listen to their students’ suggestions

  6. Evaluating a college prep intervention in Wisconsin

  7. Using literacy activities to overcome cultural and language barriers

  8. Educational technology: research on what works

  9. Why don’t more educators know the research on teaching reading?

10. Books that build empathy in children

11. Short item: Preventing educator burnout

 

Quotes of the Week

“An effective principal is a coach, guiding team members toward the accomplishment of shared goals. An effective principal is a psychologist, intuiting diverse motives among people and instilling a unified vision. An effective principal wrings maximum gains from data, while retaining an ability to set priorities minute by minute. In short, an effective principal is a master of managing people, data, and processes.”

            From “Leading Lessons,” a supplement to Principal Magazine, March/April 2019

            https://bit.ly/2TX0LOl

 

“Research has documented what works to get kids to read, yet those evidence-based reading practices appear to be missing from most classrooms.”

            Jared Myracle, Brian Kingsley, and Robin McClellan (see item #9)

 

“A well-written story can not only transport the reader into new worlds but also affect how elementary-level readers see and participate in the social world around them.”

Stephanie Kozak and Holly Recchia (see item #10)

 

“I want to be an advocate for the voiceless, the powerless, the hurting, and the lost. I want them to have at least one person whose support they never have to question.”

            Pamela Shoap, a Pennsylvania middle-school counselor, quoted in “Why School

            Counseling?” in ASCA School Counselor, March/April 2019 (Vol. 56, #4, p. 48)

 

“Justice requires that we work to restore those who have been injured.”

            Quoted in “Youth-Led Court Helps Students Make Amends” by Abigail Belch in 

Education Week, March 13, 2019 (Vol. 38, #25, p. 17), https://bit.ly/2Hx8FHM

 

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

            James Baldwin (1962) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Starting with Why

            In this article in ASCA School Counselor, Kwok-Sze Richard Wong says that for a long time he and his wife were puzzled by their daughter Tori’s trajectory:

-  At six years old, she saw the movie Babeand decided she would no longer eat meat.

-  A few years later she became a vegetarian.

-  In fifth grade she berated friends who were cruel to 17-year cicadas. 

-  In college, she majored in environmental science, despite never having focused on science and math.

-  In college, she protested against fossil fuel manufacturers, promoted renewable energy, and led campaigns to recycle and reduce waste.

-  She went to graduate school to study energy, water conservation, and food production and conducted research in rainforests.

-  A few years later, she earned a master’s degree in nutrition and sustainable agriculture and began working to help farmers grow food more safely and sustainably.

-  Nowadays, she seldom talks about energy, but is still a vegetarian.

Wong and his wife couldn’t make sense of Tori’s varied pursuits until they read Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why. Sinek distinguishes between whatpeople do, howthey do it, and why. “We see the ‘what,’” says Wong, “but the unseen ‘why’ should be at the center of everything we do. Once we determine why we want to do something, we can identify how we want to do it, then finally decide what we want to do… Tori challenges our behavior as humans. She does this by questioning the way we treat the only planet we have and the creatures who are helpless under our control.” That’s the whythat has driven her whats. 

 

“In Defense of Cicadas” by Kwok-Sze Richard Wong in ASCA School Counselor, March/April 2019 (Vol. 56, #4, p. 4), https://bit.ly/2FkIjHa

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2. Paul Bambrick-Santoyo on Effective Instructional Coaching 

(Originally titled “If You Want Them to GET IT, Get Them to SEE IT”)

            In this article in Educational Leadership, Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Uncommon Schools) describes how a principal in a New York City high school asks a teacher to describe the positive impact of the changes she’s made in her math classroom. The teacher beams: “Getting students to verify their answers and understand that zero should equal zero if you’ve solved for the correct variable – that was great.” 

The principal then asks the teacher about an insight from a recent PD on “aggressive monitoring.” “I think it’s primarily about collecting data on how students are doing during independent practice,” says the teacher. The principal pulls out her laptop, shows a brief video of a more-experienced colleague monitoring while students work, and asks the teacher about the difference between the video and her own monitoring. She immediately sees: in the video, the teacher announces what he’s looking for, takes notes while circulating, then announces a different look-for and circulates again. It’s clear what needs to be fixed.

“To teach something new in schools,” says Bambrick-Santoyo, “we heavily rely on professional development sessions. Yet PD can be one of the weakest levers for change because it often stands alone.” When principals and instructional coaches show teachers their own practice side-by-side with a model, there’s a much greater chance they will see the gap and translate new learning to their classrooms. Drawing on the experience of master surgeons, dancers, and chefs, Bambrick-Santoyo has a new maxim:If you want them to get it, get them to see it. Here’s the sequence he recommends:

• See the model – and the gap. Videos of master teachers demonstrating a particular practice are helpful (there are more than 100 in books by Doug Lemov and Bambrick-Santoyo, as well as a growing number online; videos made within one’s own school can be especially powerful). An alternative is co-observing a lesson live. It’s important to prime observers on what to look for, see the gap with their own practice, and help them think through how the method can be applied. 

• Name it, followed by a clear action step. Once a teacher sees the gap, says Bambrick-Santoyo, “the coach’s role is to help that teacher choose precise steps to take toward improvement.” The step should be “observable, high-leverage, and bite-size… Although it seems counterintuitive, the smaller and more precise the action step, the quicker the growth… Assigning large action steps that take months to carry out and monitor is not only unmotivating; it’s unrealistic.” 

• Do it, including deliberate practice. Before trying a new move in the classroom, some teachers practice alone or under the watchful eye of a coach. The New York City teacher spread exit tickets around her empty classroom and practiced walking around taking notes on a specific look-for, and the principal followed up with another class observation to see how her monitoring was progressing. 

The See It, Name It, Do Itsequence works well in post-observation conferences, says Bambrick-Santoyo, and also in data meetings (comparing student work to an exemplar), lesson planning (teachers putting their efforts side-by-side with a model plan), and during professional development (showing an exemplar of effective practice and having teachers practice on the spot with their peers. “A professional development session is only as valuable as the amount of practice it offers,” he says. 

 

“If You Want Them to GET IT, Get Them to SEE IT” by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo in Educational Leadership, March 2019 (Vol. 76, #6, p. 18-22), available for purchase at https://bit.ly/2TW1hw7; Bambrick-Santoyo is at [email protected].

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3. A Troubling Analysis of Data-Driven Instruction

            In this Teachers College Recordarticle, Margaret Evans (Illinois Wesleyan University) and colleagues report on their study of six upper-elementary teacher teams that met bi-weekly to discuss assessment results and student work. By observing 76 teacher meetings and conducting individual and group interviews, the researchers took note of several reactions to the mandated process. First, most teachers were not fans of the meetings. “Across school sites,” say Evans et al., “in individual and group meetings, the vast majority of teachers expressed frustration with the time spent on discussing student data.” Second, many teachers said assessments were taking too much instructional time and the information from assessments added nothing to what they already knew from their day-to-day work with students. Finally, teachers saw the data meetings as one of several burdensome, unhelpful initiatives (including curriculum programs and a new teacher-evaluation process) that were part of their district’s effort to win Race to the Top funding. 

            Observing teacher team meetings throughout a school year, Evans and her colleagues documented five ways that teachers explained their students’ performance on assessments:

-  Students’ actions, attitudes, or behavior – for example, students didn’t do well because they hadn’t paid attention in class or didn’t take a test seriously.

-  Problems with the format, content, or features of an assessment – for example, EL students didn’t do well because the assessment required oral fluency in English. 

-  A suspected physical, mental, or emotional issue with a student – for example, a low-performing student might have dyslexia.

-  Students’ home environment – for example, a student didn’t do well because he doesn’t read at home.

-  Instructional practices – for example, students didn’t do well on a section of a test because the concept wasn’t taught, or hadn’t been taught effectively.

Significantly, the last explanation was rarely discussed by teacher teams – on average, only 15 percent of the time. When instructional causation was discussed, it was mostly to explain positive student performance rather than to dissect and problem-solve around ineffective instruction. 

            “Although a major finding of this study was that teachers most frequently explained low performance by citing characteristics of the student,” conclude the researchers, “we do not want the takeaway message to be that we should blame teachers for blaming students. Instead, we suggest the need to distinguish between helpful and harmful claims that teachers make about students and their academic performance. Our findings denote a need to differentiate between teachers’ claims about students that are verifiable and those that are subjective, particularly negative, opinions about children. We suggest that this current political emphasis on ‘evidence-based’ teaching provides an opportunity to challenge subjective, negative claims about students and in turn place a greater value on teachers’ verifiable claims about students and their academic needs. In other words, we suggest that teachers’ knowledge of students is important in instructional decision-making, but teachers’ low expectations and/or stereotypes are not.” 

“How Did That Happen? Teachers’ Explanations for Low Test Scores” by Margaret Evans, Rebecca Teasdale, Nora Gannon-Slater, Priya La Londe, Hope Crenshaw, Jennifer Greene, and Thomas Schwandt in Teachers College Record, February 2019 (Vol. 121, #2, p. 1-40), 

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

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4. The “Underserved Third” in High Schools

            In this article in Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk(JESPAR), Yasuko Kanno (Boston University) reports on her study of two English learners who fell through the cracks in a Pennsylvania high school and graduated neither college-ready nor career-ready. Kanno believes the reason is that these students’ high school, like many others, had “an overwhelming emphasis on ‘college for all;’” they gave college-bound students a rigorous academic curriculum, and provided opportunities for students with a clear career focus to enroll in CTE courses. But Kanno quotes Regina Deil-Amen and Stefanie DeLuca (2010) referring to the “underserved third” who are not focused on college and careers, and are “likely to depart from high school having taken classes mainly from the high-school general curriculum in which they are at risk of receiving low-quality instruction, lower levels of academic preparation, and little or no job preparation or guidance.” The underserved third are mostly lower SES, underrepresented minorities, English learners, and the first in their families to aspire to college.

Kanno believes this blind spot especially hurts English learners, because about 46 percent of them drop out of high school or don’t pursue higher education. Her three-year study focused on Carlos (a talented artist) and Eddie (an aspiring car mechanic), who attended a “relatively well-resourced school staffed with highly qualified teachers with good intentions.” Her analysis of what went wrong:

• Institutional structures– The school’s course policies and schedule limited non-college-bound ELs’ opportunities. The root causes were: low expectations for Els (the focus was on teaching them English and getting them to graduation), a diluted curriculum (based on the belief that rigorous courses are possible only after students master English), and frequent assignment to sheltered, remedial, or low-track courses. Students like Eddie and Carlos “were exposed to extremely basic instruction, constant disruptions, and tense relationships between teachers and students,” says Kanno. Perversely, the students’ courseload and graduation requirements made it impossible for them to enroll in the school’s CTE courses or attend courses at an affiliated CTE campus. “Thus,” says Kanno, “there were substantial institutional barriers that made it very difficult for non-college-bound ELs such as Eddie and Carlos to acquire foundational academic skills, build trusting relationships with their teachers, and access career guidance and training.” Yet these barriers were largely invisible to educators at the school. 

• Stock stories– The school’s staff attributed Carlos’s and Eddie’s underachievement to the young men’s shortcomings – lack of English proficiency, poor performance in coursework, laziness, and hanging out with the wrong crowd (an explanation for their frequent absences). “The educators’ deficit orientation did not end with students, but also extended to their parents,” says Kanno. “The lack of parental involvement was a major source of complaint across the school.” These negative assumptions kept educators from asking Eddie and Carlos what was going on in their lives and how the school might serve them better. Kanno acknowledges teachers’ challenges getting to know individual students as they change classes every 45 or 90 minutes, as well as the difficulty of teaching students who are way behind grade level, have limited English proficiency, and are frequently absent, not to mention teachers’ powerlessness to address the structural problems that set up Carlos and Eddie for failure. 

• Missed signals– The students had strengths that should have enabled them to graduate career ready. Eddie was highly motivated to be an auto mechanic, and was already working on family members’ cars. Carlos showed real talent as an artist, and both wanted to be financially independent, were able to switch seamlessly between English and Spanish, and maintained close ties with their extended families. It’s sad that the school didn’t read these signals and present a set of career options between college and working at McDonald’s. 

Why didn’t the school do better? Kanno notes that almost all adults involved with public high schools – teachers, counselors, principals, district officials, and university researchers – have college degrees, and for them, the world of career and technical education is unfamiliar territory. “Moreover,” she says, “CTE suffers from persistent stigma as ‘dumping grounds for students who couldn’t cut it in college prep’ (Newman and Winston, 2016). Therefore, as soon as one proposes to steer a minority group of students to CTE, it raises alarms among progressive educators and policymakers, who claim that we are closing off educational opportunities to those who are already disfranchised.” 

But it’s not as though the “college for all” approach has altered the nation’s profoundly unequal educational outcomes. Kanno says that in “an alternative universe in which CTE enjoyed the same status and recognition as college, the strengths and talents of students like Carlos and Eddie might have been discovered earlier, with the encouragement to pursue CTE programs that matched their interests. The vision of a clear career pathway early on might have enabled Eddie and Carlos to recognize the relevance of academic work and motivated them to invest more in their coursework, so that they would qualify to enroll in CTE programs later in high school.”

 

“Non-College-Bound English Learners as the Underserved Third: How Students Graduate from High School Neither College- nor Career-Ready” by Yasuko Kanno in Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk, October-December 2018 (Vol. 23, #4, p. 336-358), 

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

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5. Teachers Listen to Their Students’ Suggestions

            In this Education Weekarticle, Denisa Superville describes a PD session at a 2,300-student high school in Des Moines, Iowa: one hundred students sat at tables with about seventy teachers offering frank suggestions on how to make lessons more interesting and how to help struggling students grasp concepts. The genesis of this unusual meeting was a deep dive into the school’s data, revealing that the rate of chronic absenteeism among black male students was 56 percent, compared to 35 percent schoolwide, and that the school’s racial achievement gap was the largest in the district. 

With several lesson plans in front of her, one teacher encouraged students to be frank: “Remember, you are not talking about me, you’re talking about the class, how you are impacted. It won’t hurt my feelings.” Around the room, students made suggestions: present vocabulary up front in a PowerPoint slide, shorten introductory lectures, and walk around the room to give on-the-spot input. Students were pleasantly surprised by how receptive teachers were to their ideas. 

            This was part of a larger effort to improve teaching and learning in the school, including “community walks” that got teachers into students’ neighborhoods, and suggestions for engaging students more deeply in the curriculum: assigning rigorous classrooms tasks; allowing students to serve as co-teachers; using real-world problems and texts; and using social-and-emotional learning tools. Students helped teachers understand that a student might arrive late because she had to get two siblings to another school. A consistent theme was forging closer bonds between teachers and students: “If the relationship was strong and genuine,” said principal Kevin Biggs, “and they trusted the teacher, and the teacher showed interest in them, they were more apt to go to class and work as hard as they could.”

 

“Students Give Frank Advice on How to Make School Engaging” by Denisa Superville in Education Week, March 13, 2019, https://bit.ly/2Hx8FHM

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6. Evaluating a College Prep Intervention in Wisconsin

            In this article in Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk(JESPAR), Tammy Kolbe (University of Vermont), Peter Kinsley (University of Wisconsin/Madison), Rachel Carly Feldman (Northwestern University), and Sara Goldrick-Rab (Temple University) report on their four-year study of the implementation of the AVID program (Advancement via Individual Determination), supplemented by TOPS (Teens of Promise), in the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin. AVID is designed to prepare middle-achieving high-school students with the skills, academic behaviors, and knowledge necessary for college success. TOPS added community-based mentoring, a summer internship experience, and college transition support. 

            The result? The researchers found that AVID/TOPS proved to be a “promising program for promoting high-school completion and college attendance, particularly for student groups traditionally underrepresented in high education.” Students who took part in the program were more likely than the control group to enroll in college immediately after high-school graduation, especially students who were in the program for four years. The intervention was particularly effective for male students of color in the “academic middle.” 

The AVID/TOPS initiative cost per pupil was about $4,440 a year for 689 participants – a significant investment by the school district and a local boys and girls club. The public/ private partnership added expertise and capacity and made it possible to tap into funding outside the school district. The researchers believe its long-term benefits for students make it – and programs with similar characteristics – well worth the cost. 

 

“From the (Academic) Middle to the Top: An Evaluation of the AVID/TOPS College Access Program” by Tammy Kolbe, Peter Kinsley, Rachel Carly Feldman, and Sara Goldrick-Rab in Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk, October-December 2018 (Vol. 23, #4, p. 304-335), https://bit.ly/2Y7xtM3; Kolbe can be reached at [email protected]. 

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7. Using Literacy Activities to Overcome Cultural and Language Barriers

            “Language barriers between teachers and newcomer English learners may pose seemingly insurmountable hurdles to building relationships,” say Patricia Flint, Tamra Dollar, and Mary Amanda Stewart (Texas Woman’s University) in this Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacyarticle, “but teachers can clear those through engaging literacy activities.” The authors describe three: heart maps, in which students write and draw what is nearest and dearest to them within a heart outline; graffiti boards, in which students respond to readings by sketching personal connections and associations on a board; and “All About Me” presentations, in which students use videos, songs, visuals, and translations to tell about themselves. Here are the prompts for the latter:

-  Your name and age;

-  Information about your home country: the flag, a map, and three important facts;

-  Sources of joy: What do you like to do, eat, listen to, and read? Who do you like to spend time with?

-  Pet peeves: What do you not like to do, eat, listen to? What actions annoy/anger you?

-  Your motto: What or who inspires you? Resonant sayings, quotes, song lyrics, people?

-  Use 5-10 slides, gearing the presentation to people who aren’t familiar with your country

-  Students can choose the language used in the slides, but the oral presentation must be in English.

 

“Hurdling Over Language Barriers: Building Relationships with Adolescent Newcomers Through Literacy Advancement” by Patricia Flint, Tamra Dollar, and Mary Amanda Stewart in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, March/April 2019 (Vol. 62, #5, p. 509-519, 

https://bit.ly/2Y9Ojdc; the authors can be reached at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. 

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8. Educational Technology: Research on What Works

            In this article in Education Week, Benjamin Herold summarizes the findings of MIT’s J-PAL North America report on high-quality third-party studies of K-12 ed tech:

            •Expanding access isn’t enough. Giving students tech hardware improves computer-using proficiency and gives access to educational software, but so far it’s not improving students’ grades and test scores. 

            •Be skeptical of online-only courses. Studies of full-time online charter schools and online credit-recovery programs have been negative; in-person instruction produces better results. But in situations where in-person teaching isn’t possible, online instruction can be helpful.

            •Some adaptive math software holds great promise. This is especially true of SimCalc’s interactive math for seventh and eighth grades, AnimalWatch’s math tutoring program, Cognitive Tutor Algebra 1 (Year 1 and 2), and DreamBox adaptive math. Other programs studied had no effect, and one (Cognitive Tutor Geometry) had a negative effect.

            •Electronic “nudges” can be useful.At the elementary level, it’s helpful to send text messages to parents with tips about reading to their children; in middle schools, parents benefit from updates on their children’s grades and attendance; and in high schools, students do better when they get automated reminders and personal support to complete tasks, including college applications and financial aid forms. 

            •Be wary of “growth mindset” messages. The research on sending students exhortations along these lines is inconclusive at best, and some educators and parents have raised privacy concerns. 

 

“Tech Research: 5 Key Lessons for Educators” by Benjamin Herold in Education Week, March 13, 2019 (Vol. 38, #25, p. 6-7), https://bit.ly/2TebEXQ; the J-PAL North America study is titled “Will Technology Transform Education for the Better?” by Sophie Shank, and is available at https://bit.ly/2tAdCHE.

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9. Why Don’t More Educators Know the Research on Teaching Reading?

            “Research has documented what works to get kids to read, yet those evidence-based reading practices appear to be missing from most classrooms,” say Jared Myracle (Jackson-Madison County Schools, TN), Brian Kingsley (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools, NC), and Robin McClellan (Sullivan County Public Schools, TN) in this article in Education Week. “It’s perfectly possible to become a principal or even a district curriculum leader without first learning the key research.” The authors confess that they harbored significant misconceptions on literacy curriculum well into their careers.

They suggest a “No Shame Zone” in which teachers and leaders get up to speed on the latest research without embarrassment. Some key findings to include:

-  In the early grades, systematic daily phonics instruction is essential, coupled with plenty of time with authentic texts.

-  History and science background knowledge is essential to reading comprehension.

-  Grouping students by reading level is not supported by the research.

-  Many teachers spend too much time on unproductive “skills and strategies” instruction.

-  All students need to work with grade-level texts for at least part of the school day for more-equitable outcomes.

Fortunately, say Myracle, Kingsley, and McClellan, there are high-quality literacy programs on the market today. However, they caution, the “gap between good and mediocre curricula is vast.” Schools and districts must choose carefully, based on a solid understanding of what really works in classrooms.

 

“We Have a National Reading Crisis” by Jared Myracle, Brian Kingsley, and Robin McClellan in Education Week, March 13, 2019 (Vol. 38, #25, p. 24), https://bit.ly/2ETY7iP; Myracle can be reached at [email protected].

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10. Books That Build Empathy in Children

            “A well-written story can not only transport the reader into new worlds but also affect how elementary-level readers see and participate in the social world around them,” say Stephanie Kozak and Holly Recchia (Concordia University/Montreal) in this article in The Reading Teacher. “Part of what makes human interactions rich is the ability to feel the joy that others feel, to share in sorrow when someone is in need, and to experience a sense of righteous anger when someone is treated unjustly. Equally crucial is the capacity to understand and empathize with others who have very different experiences.” They suggest these storybooks as powerful ways to build empathy in elementary-school children:

-  Miss Nelson Is Missing!by Harry Allard

-  A Year of Borrowed Menby Michelle Barker

-  Those Shoesby Maribeth Boelts

-  The Day the Crayons Quitby Drew Daywalt

-  Last Stop on Market Streetby Matt de la Peña

-  Du Iz Tak?by Carson Ellis

-  Red: A Crayon’s Storyby Michael Hall

-  Owenby Keven Henkes

-  Flora and the Flamingoby Molly Idle

-  Lost and Foundby Oliver Jeffers

-  The Bad Seedby Jory John

-  I Want My Hat Backby Jon Klassen

-  The Stamp Collectorby Jennifer Lanthier

-  Henry’s Freedom Boxby Ellen Levine

-  Virginia Wolfby Kya Maclear

-  The Junkyard Wondersby Patricia Polacco

-  After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again) by Dan Santat

-  The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!by Jon Scieszka

-  Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Taleby Mo Willems

(Middle-grade novels and young-adult fiction next week)

 

“Reading and the Development of Social Understanding: Implications for the Literacy Classroom” by Stephanie Kozak and Holly Recchia in The Reading Teacher, March/April 2019 (Vol. 72, #5, p. 569-577), https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.1760; the authors can be reached at [email protected]and [email protected].

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11. Short Item:

            Preventing educator burnout – This guest article by Lillie Marshall on the Creative Leadership Solutions website suggests travel and exercise as effective life strategies:

https://www.creativeleadership.net/blog/2019/3/16/two-ways-to-stop-teacher-burnout-on-a-budget-travel-and-exercise

 

“Two Ways to Stop Teacher Burnout on a Budget: Travel and Exercise” by Lillie Marshall, March 17, 2019, Creative Leadership Solutions

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