In This Issue:

1. Three ways feedback can be ineffective – and how to do better

2. Mike Schmoker on what’s missing in many literacy programs

3. How different prompts can improve students’ literary interpretations

4. A serious look at humor in schools

5. Adam Grant on keeping up with e-mail

6. Anticipating and addressing parent concerns about LGBTQ content

7. Children’s books about women at war

8. Having students compare traditional and modern poetry

9. Short item: An online school self-assessment tool

 

Quotes of the Week

“Teachers change brains.”

            Martha Burns (Northwestern University) in “I’m a Neuroscientist. Here’s How 

Teachers Change Kids’ Brains” in EdSurge News, February 19, 2019, 

https://bit.ly/2DUFSJG; 

 

“Laughter relieves stress and boredom, boosts engagement and well-being, and spurs not only creativity and collaboration, but also analytic precision and productivity.” 

            Alison Beard (quoted in item #4)

 

“When we go into a classroom with a preconceived notion of what instruction should look like, we often miss really fantastic teaching going on. It’s not about the practices as much as it’s about how those practices help students learn. I’ve seen teachers do everything ‘right’ and students are still disengaged or confused. Focus on the students. What are they doing? How are they learning?”

Robyn Jackson in “Turn and Talk” in Educational Leadership, March 2019 (Vol. 76, #6, p. 10-11), https://bit.ly/2Ewa4et

 

“Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinderslearning.”

            Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall (see item #1)

 

“Maybe sucking it up is a valuable ‘social and emotional’ skill.”

            Michael Petrilli in “Is a ‘Good Enough’ School Good Enough for My Kids?” in

            The Education Gadfly, February 27, 2019, https://bit.ly/2GZHi9N

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Three Ways Feedback Can Be Ineffective – and How to Do Better

            In this Harvard Business Reviewarticle, Marcus Buckingham (ADP Research Institute) and Ashley Goodall (Cisco Systems) take a close look at how employees are supervised and evaluated. The underlying question: “How can we help each person thrive and excel?” Sometimes simple, technical information is needed for a person to perform well – for example, in an operating room, there is a correct way to give an injection, and a nurse who misses a step needs to be told. 

            But with higher-level performance, many managers’ well-intentioned approach to giving feedback is ineffective. “On that,” say Buckingham and Goodall, “the research is clear: Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinderslearning.” Why? Because feedback is often based on three fallacies:

            •Fallacy #1: The source of truth– “Our evaluations are deeply colored by our own understanding of what we’re rating others on,” say Buckingham and Goodall, “our own sense of what good looks like for a particular competency, our harshness or leniency as raters, and our own inherent and unconscious biases… Recipients have to struggle through this forest of distortion in search of something that they recognize as themselves.” And the errors supervisors make in giving feedback to employees are systematic and can’t be corrected by averaging multiple ratings, any more than a color-blind person’s perception of the redness of a rose can be corrected by looking at the flower several times, or by averaging the ratings of a number of other color-blind people.

            The solution: Ask for the other person’s perception of the situation. In a hospital room, this means the doctor asking the patient, “On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being high, how would you rate your pain?” What matters is the patient’s subjective assessment, and the doctor can’t second-guess that. “Just as your doctor doesn’t know the truth of your pain, we don’t know the truth about our colleagues, at least not in any objective way,” say Buckingham and Goodall. “All we can do – and it’s not nothing – is share our own feelings and experiences, our own reactions. Thus we can tell someone whether his voice grates on us; whether he’s persuasiveto us; whether his presentation is boring to us.We may not be able to tell him where he stands, but we can tell him where he stands with us. Those are our truths, not his. This is a humbler claim, but at least it’s accurate.” 

            •Fallacy #2: The theory of learning – We believe that our feedback is “the magic ingredient that will accelerate someone’s learning,” say the authors. “Again, the research points in the opposite direction. Learning is less a function of adding something that isn’t there than it is of recognizing, reinforcing, and refining what already is… According to brain science, people grow far more neurons and synaptic connections where they already have the most neurons and synaptic connections. In other words, each brain grows most where it’s already strongest… Focusing people on their shortcomings or gaps doesn’t enable learning. It impairs it… Learning rests on our grasp of what we’re doing well, not on what we’re doing poorly, and certainly not on someone else’s sense of what we’re doing poorly… [W]e learn most when someone else pays attention to what’s working within us and asks us to cultivate it intelligently.” 

            •Fallacy #3: The theory of excellence –Good performance is highly personal and idiosyncratic, say Buckingham and Goodall; there isn’t a single prefabricated description, whether for basketball, stand-up comedy, or teaching: “Show a new teacher when her students lost interest and tell her what to do to fix this,” say the authors, “and while you may now have a teacher whose students don’t fall asleep in class, you won’t have one whose students necessarily learn any more.” Another thing: excellence isn’t the mirror image of failure, so we don’t get insights on success by looking at poor performance or doing exit interviews.

But for an individual, moving toward excellence is relatively straightforward: appreciate what’s good and cultivate it through specific guidance tuned to that person’s unique experiences and style, with the end in sight. This is how coach Tom Landry turned around the Dallas Cowboys: rather than focusing on missed tackles and bungled plays, he combed through films of previous games and compiled for each player a highlight reel of effective performance. “His instincts told him that each person would improve his performance most if he could see, in slow motion, what his own personal version of excellence looked like,” say Buckingham and Goodall. “You can do the same. Whenever you see one of your people do something that worked for you, that rocked your world just a little, stop for a minute and highlight it… ‘That! Yes, that!... Did you see what you did there?’” and describe why it worked. This helps the person anchor it, be better able to recreate it, and subsequently refine it.

The authors share some additional pointers on how to give feedback in a way that fosters excellence:

-  Instead of, “Can I give you some feedback?” say “Here’s my reaction.”

-  Instead of, “Good job!” say “Here are three things that really worked for me. What was going through your mind when you did them?”

-  Instead of, “Here’s what you should do,” say “Here’s what I would do.” 

-  Instead of, “Here’s what you need to improve,” say “Here’s what worked best for me, and here’s why.”

-  Instead of, “That didn’t really work,” say “When you did x, I felt y or I didn’t get that.” 

-  Instead of, “You need to improve your communication skills,” say “Here’s exactly where you started to lose me.”

-  Instead of, “You need to be more responsive,” say “When I don’t hear from you, I worry that we’re not on the same page.” 

-  Instead of, “You lack strategic thinking,” say “I’m struggling to understand your plan.”

-  Instead of, “You should do x [in response to a request for advice],” say “What do you feel you’re struggling with, and what have you done in the past that’s worked in a similar situation?”

 

“The Feedback Fallacy” by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in Harvard Business Review, March-April 2019 (Vol. 97, #2, p. 92-101), https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy

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2. Mike Schmoker on What’s Missing in Many Literacy Programs

            In this article in Education Week, author/consultant Mike Schmoker says that popular, well-regarded commercial literacy programs “often lack a robust evidence base. That’s because they are deficient in precisely those aspects most critical to acquiring the ability to read, write, and speak well. Instead, they abound in busywork – worksheets, group activities, and multiple-choice exercises.” 

            He describes visiting a school district that had adopted one of these programs. He pointed out these and other deficiencies, and then heard that the program’s visiting consultants were insisting that it be followed to the letter – with fidelity. Schmoker got in touch with the publisher’s highest-ranking official and a prominent endorser, both of whom conceded that the critique was accurate. “To their credit,” says Schmoker, “they urged us – contrary to the company’s on-site consultants – to replace large portions of the program with those elements it lacked.” 

            He urges district leaders and principals to conduct an audit of their literacy programs to see if they have the essential ingredients:

            • Reading– An intensive phonics component is key, but it must be accompanied by “abundant amounts of reading, speaking, and writing in all disciplines,” says Schmoker. “Even before students fully master phonics-based decoding, they should be reading – and listening to – large amounts of fiction and nonfiction.” Literacy experts like Timothy Shanahan and Richard Allington are emphatic that students should be reading at least an hour a day, across subject areas. “Without this,” says Schmoker, “many students never acquire the knowledge and vocabulary essential to fluency and reading comprehension.”

            • Discussion– Starting in the early grades, there should be frequent, all-class talk about texts, including debates and seminars, accompanied by explicit instruction on speaking clearly, audibly, and with civility. “When I do demonstration lessons for teachers,” says Schmoker, “it is often apparent that students aren’t being taught these vital communication skills.” He worries that too much time is spent in unproductive small-group conversations and pseudo-work, including excessive “cut, color, and paste activities” in the elementary grades.

            • Writing– Almost daily, he says, students need to be writing about what they read, using skills like analysis, comparison, explaining, making arguments, and justifying interpretations. “This daily written work,” says Schmoker, “which need not always be collected and scored – should be the basis for longer, more formal papers” – and those need to be scheduled at regular intervals.

            • Text level acceleration– Students should be reading increasing amounts of grade-level texts across subject areas, scaffolded by explicit instruction in vocabulary, background knowledge, annotating, and note-taking – with frequent checks for understanding and on-the-spot adjustment of teaching to reach all students. 

 

“The Problem with Literacy Programs” by Mike Schmoker in Education Week, February 20, 2019, https://bit.ly/2Vd3xMf; Schmoker can be reached at [email protected].

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3. How Different Prompts Can Improve Students’ Literary Interpretations

            In this Journal of the Learning Sciencesarticle, Sarah Levine (Stanford University) says thematic interpretation of a short story or novel is complex cognitive work. At its best, it should involve:

-  Mind-reading the intentions and desires of characters;

-  Identifying salient details in a text;

-  Interpreting tone;

-  Integrating disparate features of a story;

-  Finding relationships among a story’s plot, conflict, and ending;

-  Attempting to map those details to some set of related connotations;

-  Tracking potentially meaningful authorial moves.

Levine believes many students aren’t reaching these levels of thematic interpretation. Why? Because teachers too often give students low-level prompts in “school” language – for example, asking them to summarize the story, identify a single correct answer or lesson (e.g., the importance of family), or come up with a positive moral. “Studies of classroom discussion,” says Levine, “have found that teachers introduce the process of literary interpretation as a matter of ‘right or wrong,’ guiding students, especially those in lower tracked classes, toward an ‘official textbook interpretation.’” Students comply (because most of them know how to “do school”), missing the opportunity to explore deeper themes and meanings in works of literature.

            Levine conducted a study in which high-school students were asked to read the story Prisoner’s Dilemmaand respond to a prompt that used everyday language to frame thematic interpretation (the first two below) or a prompt that used “school language” (the last):

-  Reading this story suggests that the world can be a place where ______.

-  (Choose one): By the end, this story seems to have a mostly positive outlook on life, because it suggests ______.  OR  By the end, this story seems to have a mostly negative outlook on life, because it suggests ______.

-  Some of my interpretations of themes in this story are ______. (Control group)

Students completed one of the three sentence prompts and wrote a paragraph “to support or explain the interpretations you just wrote about.”

            Sure enough, Levine reports, students who were given prompts that asked them (in everyday language) to delve more deeply into the story were significantly more likely than the comparison group to move beyond summary or clichéd textbook themes and construct nuanced thematic interpretations. This was true across grade and achievement levels. “On the whole,” Levine concludes, “these results suggest that teachers and students could benefit from reframing literary reading in general as a process of exploring literary worlds and could further benefit from simply jettisoning the framing of theme as message or moral or even ‘What was the author trying to say?’… Moving to classroom discourses that frame literary reading as world exploration might more generally support literary reading, response, interpretation, and analysis.”

 

“Using Everyday Language to Support Students in Constructing Thematic Interpretations” by Sarah Levine in The Journal of the Learning Sciences, January-March 2019 (Vol. 28, #1, p. 1-31), https://bit.ly/2C5OnBq; Levine can be reached at [email protected]. 

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4. A Serious Look At Humor in Schools

            In this article in Independent School, California school leaders Duncan Lyon and Olaf Jorgenson report on their exploration of the role of humor in school leadership. They quote Alison Beard from a 2014 Harvard Business Reviewarticle: “Laughter relieves stress and boredom, boosts engagement and well-being, and spurs not only creativity and collaboration, but also analytic precision and productivity.” Humor can also be a memory aid because funny moments are emotionally charged, and can help de-escalate conflicts, making people less argumentative and defensive. 

            But research shows that after the age of 23, Americans laugh less than when they were younger; their self-perception turns toward seriousness. Lyon and Jorgenson offer these suggestions to ramp up people’s “humor IQ”:

            • Laugh at yourself. Self-deprecation paradoxically signals self-confidence, humanizes a leader, balances positional authority, creates connections with others, and implicitly gives permission for others to be funny. 

            • Be authentic, using the kind of humor that works for you. “It’s not whether you’re funny,” say the authors, “it’s what kind of funny you are.”

            • Being clever is often enough. “If you can’t be ‘ha-ha’ funny, at least be ‘a-ha!’” say Lyon and Jorgenson. 

            • Create an in-group. Humor can be like a conspiracy, especially if it’s about things everyone is worried about. 

            • Occasionally be goofy. One school leader covered everything in a colleague’s office with aluminum foil.

            • Avoid aggressive humor. This includes roasts, teasing, sarcasm, mocking, and punching down to lower-status colleagues. 

            Everyone surveyed for this article, conclude Lyon and Jorgenson, “agreed that the most successful school leaders have an evolved sense of humor – whether by default or practiced design – and that humor is an inextricable trait of a healthy school culture.” 

 

“Laughing Matters” by Duncan Lyon and Olaf Jorgenson in Independent School, Spring 2019 (Vol. 78, #3, p. 51-54), no e-link; Lyon is at [email protected],Jorgenson at 

[email protected].

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5. Adam Grant on Keeping Up with E-Mail

            In this New York Timesarticle, Adam Grant (Wharton School/University of Pennsylvania) says bluntly that ignoring a personal e-mail is “an act of incivility… It sends a signal that you’re disorganized – or that you just don’t care… Not answering e-mails today is like refusing to take phone calls in the 1990s or ignoring letters in the 1950s. E-mail is not household clutter and you’re not Marie Kondo.” 

The average American has 199 unread inbox messages, and it’s sometimes said that all those e-mails are other people’s priorities. Grant pushes back: “Your priorities should include other people and their priorities. It’s common courtesy to engage with people who are thoughtful in reaching out.” Because let’s face it, he says: “These days, e-mail is central to most jobs. What we really need to do is make e-mail something we think carefully about before sending, and therefore feel genuinely bad ignoring… Responding in a timely manner shows that you are conscientious – organized, dependable, and hardworking. And that matters.”

            Of course we’ve all lost occasional e-mails, and some just don’t deserve a response, says Grant, including: 

-  Someone who asks a question you’re not qualified to answer;

-  Strangers asking you to share their content on social media;

-  People asking you to introduce them to a famous colleague;

-  People asking you to spend hours advising them on a project;

-  Someone repeatedly asking favors;

-  People demanding an immediate response at odd hours.

Speaking of time of day, Grant likes the idea of setting clear parameters on when e-mails will get immediate attention – for example, telling colleagues that you’ll be on e-mail from 8 to 9 in the morning and 3 to 4 in the afternoon, and unless it’s an emergency, don’t expect an immediate response at other times. 

“Remember that a short response is kinder and more professional than none at all,” says Grant. If you have too much on your plate, say so. If it’s not in your wheelhouse, briefly explain. If you’re overwhelmed, set up an auto-response message or give people another time to reach you. Or just say no, politely. Grant quotes E.B. White’s response to an invitation to join a committee: “Thank you for the invitation. I must decline, for secret reasons.” 

 

“No, You Can’t Ignore E-Mail. It’s Rude” by Adam Grant in The New York Times, February 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/opinion/sunday/email-etiquette.html

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6. Anticipating and Addressing Parent Resistance to LGBTQ Content

            In this article in Theory Into Practice, Jill Hermann-Wilmarth (Western Michigan University) and Caitlin Law Ryan (East Carolina University) say the biggest worry among educators who want to use LGBTQ content in elementary classrooms is how parents will respond. There are three basic considerations:

-  Many parents are neutral toward, or explicitly appreciative of, teachers making their classrooms more inclusive.

-  Portrayals of sexuality are already present in classrooms, even if LGBTQ topics are not included – for example, fairy tales and playground kissing games. 

-  It’s important for LGBTQ children and families to feel safe and included in schools.

Herman-Wilmarth and Ryan describe how two veteran teachers (one lesbian, the other straight) handle parental objections to LGBTQ topics they include in their Midwestern grade 4 and 5 classrooms, one in a diverse urban public school, the other in a small private school. Most parents are highly supportive of this content (“Wow, kids can talk about things on this level!” said one), but a few parents object, and that shapes the way the teachers handle curriculum. Here’s how:

            • Making LGBTQ issues a logical part of larger units– For example, one teacher includes books on this topic in a year-long “Being Problem Solvers” unit (different forms of oppression, including racism, classism, and sexism), the other in a unit on Social Justice and Identity (the Flint water crisis, the removal of Confederate flags from the South Carolina State House, Japanese internment during World War II, and other issues of inclusion and exclusion). This way the LGBTQ texts don’t “stand on their own as a reflection of a separate agenda,” say Hermann-Wilmarth and Ryan. Both units also involve lots of grade-appropriate, standards-based reading, writing, discussion, and research. 

            • Accommodating individual students– For example, when one parent demanded that her daughter not take part in reading a book about a transgender person, the teacher had the student work on an alternative topic in the office while the book was being read aloud. The teacher respected this parent’s concern, but didn’t allow her to dictate the curriculum for the whole class. 

            • Reframing resistance as dialogue– Both teachers avoid being defensive and invite parents to talk about their concerns. Once, when reading aloud from Roald Dahl’s book, The Witches, one of the teachers heard some students snickering at the word queer. In this passage, the word meant different, and the teacher paused to explain several possible meanings, including the one that had caused students’ reaction. Hearing about this teaching moment, a parent wrote a letter saying the teacher, as part of her “-isms curriculum,” had introduced new information that children weren’t aware of, didn’t need to know, and could harm “sensitive” children like her daughter. The teacher responded with a respectful letter explaining her choices and arguing that the classroom is a microcosm of society, and it would have been neglectful to let this teachable moment pass without addressing some children’s derisive reaction. Her tone normalized the difference of opinion and helped the parent think about her objection. 

These teachers’ straightforward approach, say Hermann-Wilmarth and Ryan, serves “to place homophobic exclusion of LGBTQ topics outside the norm. Through their language and actions, they show how schools with queer people and LGBTQ-inclusive texts are (or at least should be) no longer in the closet. It is resistant parents who will need to adjust.”

 

“Navigating Parental Resistance: Learning from Responses of LGBTQ-Inclusive Elementary School Teachers” by Jill Hermann-Wilmarth and Caitlin Law Ryan in Theory Into Practice, Winter 2019 (Vol. 58, #1, p. 89-98), https://bit.ly/2TdpX3u; Hermann-Wilmarth can be reached at [email protected].

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7. Children’s Books About Women At War

            In this article in Social Studies for the Young Learner, Jing Williams (University of South Dakota) recommends books about women in U.S. military conflicts:

Picture books:

-  Cathy Williams, Buffalo Soldierby Sharon Solomon, illustrated by Doreen Lorenzetti (2010) – The first female Buffalo Soldier (hiding her gender identity) during the Civil War

-  Mary Walker Wears the Pants: The True Story of the Doctor, Reformer, and Civil War Heroby Cheryl Harness, illustrated by Carlo Molinari (2013) – The first and only woman to receive the Medal of Honor

-  Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, A Civil War Heroby Marissa Moss, illustrated by John Hendrix (2011) – Heroism during this conflict

-  The Poppy Lady: Moina Bell Michael and Her Tribute to Veteransby Barbara Walsh, illustrated by Layne Johnson (2012) – A teacher launches a national campaign to make the red poppy the symbol of veterans’ sacrifices.

-  They Called Her Molly Pitcherby Anne Rockwell, illustrated by Cynthia von Buhler (2002) – Frontline heroism during the Revolutionary War

Chapter books:

-  The Brave Women and Children of the American Revolution by John Micklos (2009)

-  Count on Us: American Women in the Militaryby Amy Nathan (2004)

-  Frank Thompson: Her Civil War Storyby Bryna Stevens (1992)

-  Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent: How Daring Slaves and Free Blacks Spied for the Union During the Civil Warby Thomas Allen (2008)

-  I’ll Pass for Your Comrade: Women Soldiers in the Civil Warby Anita Silvey (2008)

-  Petticoat Spies: Six Women Spies of the Civil Warby Peggy Caravantes (2002)

-  Yankee Doodle Gals: Women Pilots of World War IIby Amy Nathan (2001)

 

“HERstory When We Were At War” by Jing Williams in Social Studies for the Young Learner, January/February 2019 (Vol. 31, #3, p. 24-28), https://bit.ly/2tQQ9BT; Williams is at 

[email protected].

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8. Comparing Traditional and Modern Poetry

            In this English Journalarticle, Texas high-school teacher Joshua Hamilton suggests having students read and annotate these pairs of traditional and contemporary poems (taken respectively from 101 Great American Poemsand The Spoken Word Revolution):

-  “The Children’s Hour” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and “Dear Son, Part 1” by Zora Howard

-  “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden and “Oya” by Reggie O’Hare

-  “I Am the People, the Mob” by Carl Sandburg and “All Eyez On U” by Nikki Giovanni

-  “To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet and “Dear Neil Armstrong” by Mike McGee

-  “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay and “Funeral Like Nixon” by Gail Danley

 

“On Stage Next: Rookie Teacher Takes a Risk” by Joshua Hamilton in English Journal, January 2019 (Vol. 108, #3, p. 27-33), no free e-link; Hamilton can be reached at 

[email protected]. 

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9. Short Item:

            An online school self-assessment tool – The Strategic System Snapshot Mini from ERS is a free school self-assessment www.erstrategies.org/tap/strategic_system_snapshot_miniaddressing standards and instructional resources, teaching, school design, leadership, school support, funding and portfolio, and community engagement. 

 

Spotted in “School Tools: The Resourceful Leader” in Educational Leadership, March 2019 (Vol. 76, #6, p. 11)

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