In This Issue:

1. Balancing an innovative culture with tough love

2. Nature versus nurture in child development

3. Key insights from neuroscientists

4. What elementary educators need to know about the reading brain

5. A Florida ELA teacher gets high-school kids reading for pleasure

6. An attempt to prepare Tennessee students to succeed in college math

7. Showing interest in colleagues’ work through our questions

8. Short items: (a) A five-minute video on 2018

 

Quotes of the Week

“Though times may have changed, little children have not. They need what they have always needed: strong, consistent parents; opportunities for unstructured, imaginative play; help in understanding their feelings and expressing them appropriately; and plenty of opportunities for physical activity.”

            Georgianna Roberts in a letter to The New York Times, December 29, 2018,

            https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/opinion/letters/children-parents.html

 

“Nothing in reading acquisition is more important than beginning systematic, targeted intervention as early as possible.”

            Maryann Wolf (see item #4)

 

“Deep reading is always about connection: connecting what we know to what we read, what we read to what we feel, what we feel to what we think, and how we think to how we live out our lives in a connected world.”

            Maryann Wolf (ibid.)

 

“It’s alwaysgood to be skeptical about commercial products based on brain research.”

            Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa (see item #3)

 

“If it is safe for me to criticize your ideas, it must also be safe for you to criticize mine – whether you’re higher or lower in the organization than I am.”

            Gary Pisano (see item #1)

 

“Be interested in others, if you hope to be interesting to others. Genuine curiosity feels like love and respect.”

Dan Rockwell (see item #7)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Balancing an Innovative Culture with Tough Love

            In this Harvard Business Reviewarticle, Gary Pisano (Harvard Business School) says it’s commonly believed that for an organization to be innovative, the culture must encourage experimentation and speaking up, tolerate failure, and be collaborative and non-hierarchical. However, says Pisano, these “easy-to-like behaviors that get so much attention are only one side of the coin. They must be counterbalanced by some tougher and frankly less fun behaviors.” Specifically:

• Tolerance for failure must be balanced by zero tolerance for incompetence. “The truth is that a tolerance for failure requires having extremely competent people,” he says “Exploring risky ideas that ultimately fail is fine, but mediocre technical skills, sloppy thinking, bad work habits, and poor management are not. People who don’t meet expectations are either let go or moved into roles that better fit their abilities.” Of course it’s important for leaders to clearly articulate standards of performance and explain the difference between productive and unproductive failures. 

• A willingness to experiment requires rigorous discipline. It doesn’t mean “working like some third-rate abstract painter who randomly throws paint at a canvas,” says Pisano. “Discipline-oriented cultures select experiments carefully on the basis of their potential learning value, and they design them rigorously to yield as much information as possible relative to their costs… Being more disciplined about killing losing projects makes it less risky to try new things.” 

• Psychological safety requires comfort with brutal candor. When people feel they can speak truthfully and openly without fear of reprisal, learning is fostered and major problems are prevented. But psychological safety “is a two-way street,” says Pisano. “If it is safe for me to criticize your ideas, it must also be safe for you to criticize mine – whether you’re higher or lower in the organization than I am. Unvarnished candor is critical to innovation because it is the means by which ideas evolve and improve.” Leaders need to model being candid in a respectful manner.

• Collaboration must be balanced with individual accountability. Working well together can be confused with consensus, says Pisano, and waiting for consensus can bog down decision-making. Good managers listen to input from collaborative colleagues, but in the end the leader must act and take responsibility. 

• Flatness requires strong leadership. “In culturally flat organizations, people are given wide latitude to take actions, make decisions, and voice their opinions,” says Pisano. Flat organizations tend to generate more ideas than hierarchical ones, and they respond more quickly to changing circumstances. But flat cultures can become chaotic and unproductive if there isn’t strong, visionary, detail-oriented leadership – carried out with “a deft hand.” 

Each of these is a balancing act, concludes Pisano, and any one of them can get out of whack. “There is a difference between being candid and just plain nasty,” he says. “Leaders need to be on the lookout for excessive tendencies, particularly in themselves. If you want your organization to strike the delicate balance required, then you as a leader must demonstrate the ability to strike that balance yourself.” 

 

“The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures” by Gary Pisano in Harvard Business Review, January/February 2019 (Vol. 97, #1, p. 62-71), https://bit.ly/2GpjM6D

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2. Nature versus Nurture in Child Development 

            “Many children are able to thrive in any environment, while others may flourish only under the most favorable conditions,” says pediatrician/professor Thomas Boyce (University of California/San Francisco) in this article in Psychology Today. Early experiences with psychological trauma and adversity create obstacles to normal development and impair mental and physical health, says Boyce, but there’s variation in how children respond: “While some are powerfully affected by trauma, others are able to effectively weather adverse experiences, sustaining few, if any, developmental or health consequences.” Here are the two types:

            •Dandelion children– About 80 percent of kids “show a kind of biological indifference to experiences of adversity,” says Boyce, “with stress response circuits in their brains that are minimally reactive to such events. Like dandelions that thrive in almost any environment, such children are mostly unperturbed by the stressors and traumas they confront.” 

            •Orchid children– About 20 percent “show an exceptional susceptibility to both negative and positive social contexts,” he says, “with stress response circuits highly sensitive to adverse events. Like orchids, which require very particular, supportive environments to thrive, these children show an exceptional capacity for succeeding in nurturant, supportive circumstances, but sustain a disproportionate number of illnesses and problems when raised in stressful, adverse social conditions.” 

            Why did orchid children survive over the course of human evolution? Boyce suggests that early hominid groups may have benefited from having a few individuals in their midst who were super-sensitive to impending attacks by animals or hostile rivals. Being an orchid “might also be of great benefit to those living at the other extreme,” he says, “in environments of exceptional safety, protection, and abundance. Here, the propensity of orchid children to be open and porous to environmental events and exposures would garner even greater advantages. Most children would thrive in such settings; orchids would thrive spectacularly.” 

            Dandelion/orchid differences are not entirely innate, says Boyce: they are the result of the interaction of genes and social contexts, with environmental cues regulating the expression of genetic differences. “Recognizing this differential susceptibility,” he says, “is an essential key to understanding the experiences of individual children, to parenting children of differing sensitivities and temperaments effectively, and to fostering the healthy, adaptive capacity of all young people.” 

            In a telling experiment, researchers measured the correlation between newborn babies’ Apgar scores in the first five minutes of life and teachers’ observations of the same children in kindergarten. On average, children with lower Apgar scores were less compliant with rules and instructions as five-year-olds and had more difficulty sitting still and focusing, less interest in books and reading, and more difficulty grasping and using a pencil. “At each lower step on the Apgar scale,” says Boyce, “such physical, social, emotional, language, and communication domains of development were all significantly more compromised five years later.” 

But it’s not all about genes, researchers have found; genetic characteristics create children’s dispositions, but don’t necessarily determine the outcomes. Children born with orchid-like genes who are raised in different environments – for example, those placed in cruel, negligent orphanages in 1980s Romania versus those welcomed into nurturing foster homes – had strikingly different outcomes: the latter recovered remarkably well from a bad start in terms of development and mental health. What’s at work here is epigenetics – the new science of how the environment influences the expression of genes. 

Boyce says there’s an adage among pediatricians that all parents are environmental determinists until they have their own children, at which point they switch to believing that it’s all about genes. Watching a child throwing a tantrum at the next table in a restaurant, a pre-child couple says it’s clearly the parents’ fault for not raising their child properly. But when the same couple is dealing with its own out-of-control child in a public place, “we hope that those around us understand that we’ve done our best, but the child came into the world with this temperament,” says Boyce. “It’s far more comforting to ascribe the behavior of our own noisy or troubling toddler to genes, for which we have only passive responsibility, than to our capacities as parents, for which we are more directly accountable.” 

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, he concludes: it’s not either/or but rather both/and. “Every human disposition and disorder of mental or physical health depends on an intricate interaction between internal and external causes to take root and advance. The key to understanding human differences… will involve a keener knowledge of how genetic difference and environmental variation work together to change biological processes. This approach to ‘unpuzzling’ human nature and wellness brings us closer to understanding what makes orchids and dandelions bloom, wither, or move between these states over the course of a changing life… You can think of human life as the song that issues from the epigenetic piano and its equalizer, the result of a complex compositional process shaped by both genes and environments. Each person is predisposed to play certain types of scores, like those of the orchid or the dandelion, but there is abundant space for unique variation and improvisation.”

 

“Orchids and Dandelions” by Thomas Boyce in Psychology Today, January/February 2019 (Vol. 51, #1, p. 76-87), https://bit.ly/2TistRB; Boyce can be reached at [email protected]; he is the author of The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Some Children Struggle and How All Can Thrive(Knopf, 2019). 

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3. Key Insights from Neuroscientists

            In this interview with Rafael Heller in Kappan, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa (Latin American Social Science Research Faculty, Ecuador) shares recent findings of the Delphi panel – a group of experts in neuroscience, psychology, and education that was formed more than a decade ago to build and support teachers’ pedagogical knowledge. Tokuhama-Espinosa begins by debunking some “mistaken beliefs” harbored by many educators and parents:

-   That students have differing learning styles;

-   That it’s possible to do more than one cognitively demanding task at the same time;

-   That specific abilities (for example, math, reading, spatial perception) are localized in specific parts of the brain;

-   That there are significant differences between male and female brains (there are small differences, but there’s far more brain variation amongmen and amongwomen).

Getting adults to let go of these and other misconceptions is hard – we cling to our erroneous beliefs – but it’s an important professional development mission, especially with novice teachers. 

Many commercial programs are selling products to schools based on bogus claims, says Tokuhama-Espinosa. “It’s alwaysgood to be skeptical about commercial products based on brain research,” she says. “Don’t be fooled by how many scientists a company has on its advisory board, or what they’ve been able to teach rats in the lab, or even what they’ve been able to teach some kids under controlled conditions. It’s just not that straightforward to turn research findings into effective programs and apps. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

            The Delphi panel has reached agreement on six core principles about how all brains work – across contexts or cultures:

-   Human brains are as unique as human faces; the basic structure is similar, but each person’s unique genetic makeup combines with life experiences (and free will) to shape neural pathways.

-   Each individual’s brain is differently prepared to learn different tasks; the variables are the person’s biology and genetic makeup, prenatal and perinatal events, environmental exposures, the learning context, prior learning experiences, and personal choices.

-   New learning is influenced by prior experiences; the brain is highly efficient in decoding external experiences and comparing them with existing memories. 

-   The brain is constantly changing based on individual experiences; these changes, part of a complex, dynamic, integrated system, occur at the molecular level, even before they are visible in behavior.

-   The brain is plastic; that’s true throughout the lifespan, though there are important developmental differences by age. 

-   No new learning takes place without some form of memory and some form of attention; most school learning requires that working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory are functioning, as well as conscious attention.

“Free will has its limits,” says Tokuhama-Espinosa. “It’s just not true that we can rewire our brains to become whoever we want. TheMy Fair Ladystory has to go out the window.” 

            What are the implications of all this for schools? Tokuhama-Espinosa says many teachers are already acting on the findings, but good PD helps them understand whythe practices they’re using are important. For example, teachers may be making connections with students’ background knowledge when introducing a new topic, or getting students to think metacognitively about how they go about solving math problems, but cognitive research can help them understand howand whythese and other practices are so important. “I think this is the best way to empower teachers,” she says. “If they know the science, then that allows them to be better researchers in the classroom. And, you know, teachers do more experiments in a day than a neuroscientist does in a lifetime. They may not document it or present it at conferences, but they are always experimenting, constantly asking themselves, What do I plan to do? What did I actually do? Did it work? Why or why not? And the science gives them the background knowledge they need to make those judgments.”

 

“What We Know (and Think We Know) About the Learning Brain: An Interview with Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa” by Rafael Heller in Phi Delta Kappan, December 2018/January 2019 (Vol. 100, #4, p. 24-30), https://bit.ly/2rlkGGH; the author’s book is Neuromyths: Debunking False Ideas About the Brain(Norton, 2018). 

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4. What Elementary Educators Need to Know About the Reading Brain

            “A large, fundamental mistake,” says Maryann Wolf (University of California/Los Angeles) in this Kappanarticle, “– with many unfortunate consequences for children, teachers, and parents around the world – is the assumption that reading is natural to human beings and that it will simply emerge ‘whole cloth’ like language when the child is ready.” In fact, she says, reading is an “unnatural cultural invention,” barely 6,000 years old. On the clock of human evolution, that’s a second before midnight.

            Fortunately, the brain is highly adaptable (neuroplasticity) and has tremendous capacity (there are as many connections in one cubic centimeter of the brain as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy). That’s why humans have been able to manage reading in addition to everything else we do. Taught well, the brain is able to master the elaborate “circus” of reading, says Wolf, “with three large overlapping rings (representing vision, language, and cognition), connected to two smaller rings (motor and affective functions), all of which are overseen by an ‘executive center’ that handles attention, memory, hypothesis generating, and decision making.” It takes the whole brain to handle all that!

            Recent research findings, combined with previous insights, allow schools to immediately assess which of six developmental profiles describes an entering kindergarten student. New assessment batteries make it possible for teachers and parents to understand exactly what each child needs to become a proficient reader:

-   Children in two of the profiles have average or above-average skills and will need only good instruction to excel. 

-   Other children have difficulty with letters and sounds, probably because they’ve had little exposure to the alphabet or the English language; they’ll respond quickly if instruction targets these deficits. (Some children in this group may have visual-based difficulties and need further testing.)

-   Three of the profiles include children who will be diagnosed with some form of reading disability or dyslexia.

“There are few discoveries more important to those of us who study dyslexia,” says Wolf, “than to be able to predict it before the child has had to endure ignominious, daily public failures before peers, parents, and teachers… By assessing struggling young readers early on, we can prevent some of the emotional detritus that often characterizes their reading experiences… Nothing in reading acquisition is more important than beginning systematic, targeted intervention as early as possible.” 

“Some children, particularly boys, show no obvious areas of weakness in their profile but are simply not yet ready to learn to read,” Wolf continues. “Understanding this group requires more in-depth evaluation (to ensure that there are no underlying weaknesses) and also more-reasonable expectations for our children than is sometimes the case… Some children are pushed to read too hard too soon, before they are developmentally ready… The bottom line is that fears about third-grade state test results should never dictate decisions about when whole kindergarten classes receive instruction for reading.” Many children in Europe are taught to read in their equivalent of first grade, and the evidence is that they learn with fewer problems. 

Wolf laments that the phonics/whole language reading war (“the debate that never should have been”) is still raging in some quarters. It’s not either/or, she says; children need systematic instruction on the basics of reading andearly, deep immersion in stories, authentic literature, word meanings, and creativity. Recently developed assessments allow teachers to see which rungs on the developmental reading ladder a child between ages 5 and 10 might be missing:

-   Phonemes and their connections to letters;

-   The meanings and functions of words and morphemes in sentences;

-   An immersion in stories that require sophisticated deep-reading processes;

-   Learning the meanings and grammatical uses of words in increasingly complex sentences;

-   Learning about new letter patterns that reappear and help readers figure out word meanings;

-   Making basic functions so practiced and automatic that children can focus their attention on increasingly more sophisticated comprehension;

-   Expanding background knowledge;

-   Regularly eliciting children’s own thoughts and imagination in speaking and writing.

“All the rungs are important,” says Wolf, “if we are to prepare children to become fluent readers who use both their imagination and their analytical capacities… [F]luent reading involves knowing not only how words work but also how they make us feel. Empathy and perspective taking are part of the complex fabric of feelings and thoughts, whose convergence propels greater understanding… Deep reading is always about connection: connecting what we know to what we read, what we read to what we feel, what we feel to what we think, and how we think to how we live out our lives in a connected world.” 

 

“The Science and Poetry in Learning (and Teaching) to Read” by Maryanne Wolf in Phi Delta Kappan, December 2018/January 2019 (Vol. 100, #4, p. 13-17), https://bit.ly/2BP63jT; Wolf can be reached at [email protected].

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5. A Florida ELA Teacher Gets High-School Kids Reading for Pleasure

            In this article in English Journal, high-school teacher Erin Parke (also an adjunct at the University of South Florida/Tampa) says that despite stocking her classroom with lots of high-interest books and organizing them by genre, many of her students weren’t picking them up. She tried book talks, literature circles with students choosing books on a similar theme, “currently reading” signs posted on the classroom door, and preaching the gospel of loving books, but nothing worked; kids just weren’t reading on their own. Some proudly declared that they hadn’t read a book since elementary school. 

            It occurred to Parke that book jackets “might appear to be in a code that is revealed only to the lucky few. If I could remove this roadblock to the world encased inside that intimidating cover,” she reasoned, “I might be able to provide students with a clearer window to what lay beneath.” This led her to the idea of A Blind Date with a Book. Parke began covering books in red butcher paper and writing on the front a few bullet-points about the content – for example:

-   Female protagonist, coming of age, nerd stuff, romantic

-   Mystery, modern take on classic literature, teen protagonists, part of a series

-   Social justice, female protagonist, police brutality

-   LGBTQ, romance, coming-of-age

After several weeks of preparation (students were curious but all Parke would say is “You’ll see”) Parke launched the idea on a February morning. With covered books lined up on the whiteboard ledge, covers facing out, she explained to her first-period class that this was an extra-credit assignment: to get credit, students had to choose a book, make a solid effort at reading it (at least half-way through), and return the book with a filled-out “Rate a Date” slip with the title of the book; whether they finished it; if they would consider reading another book by the same author; if they would recommend the book to a friend; a 3-5-sentence review of the book; and, if they didn’t finish it, the reason (boring? too difficult?). If students did all that, they would get extra credit and could sign out another book, provided they agreed not to open it till they left class (“I knew that I wanted to maintain some mystery,” says Parke, “something that would remain elusive and fun beyond the five seconds it took the students to unwrap the package.”)

            To her complete surprise, students (including a notoriously “troubled” boy) snapped up the books (this boy had trouble deciding which of three books he would take), and by the time her fourth-period class arrived, there were only two books left. “What about us?” students wailed. “I promised to wrap more books for them,” says Parke, “but I soon discovered that I had a problem I didn’t anticipate: I simply couldn’t keep the books on the shelves.” Even students in her non-ELA elective classes wanted books – and they didn’t even have the incentive of extra credit. 

            The real payoff came on the second day when the “reluctant readers” in her first-period class walked in with unwrapped books, sat down, and started reading. “Instead of begging them to put their phones away,” says Parke, “I was faced with a new dilemma – I would either have to forgo my lesson plan for the day or be forced to ask engaged children to put their books away” (she let them read instead of doing the bellwork). In the days that followed, students started returning books with rave reviews, and Parke put new covers on the books with students’ comments below the descriptions. Soon a good portion of the books in Parke’s library were covered and circulating, and she kept the activity going much longer than she’d planned. Looking ahead to the following year, Parke planned to devote an entire unit to the activity, allowing students to choose their books and enjoy reading for pleasure as part of the regular curriculum.

Why was the “blind date” idea so successful? There was something about propping the books up below the whiteboard that made the process of choosing a book easier and less intimidating, but mostly it was that students couldn’t see the real covers and were drawn to the teacher’s pithy and enticing bullet points. One student said it got her reading books outside her comfort zone; another said it gave new meaning to the adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The bottom line: students were reading a lot and enjoying it.

 

“A Blind Date with a Literary Soulmate” by Erin Parke in English Journal, November 2018 (Vol. 108, #2, p. 14-16), available at https://bit.ly/2GRdSLFfor NCTE members; Parke can be reached at [email protected].

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6. An Attempt to Prepare Tennessee Students to Succeed in College Math

            In this Chronicle of Higher Educationarticle, Angela Boatman (Vanderbilt University) and Thomas Kane (Harvard University) describe a Tennessee program that addresses math remediation in high school, with the goal of students not having to take remedial courses in college. (Unlike other states, where students are often surprised to learn they must take remedial courses after arriving at college, Tennessee gives student an early warning based on their eleventh-grade ACT scores.) Launched in 2012, SAILS (Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support) enrolls high-school seniors who don’t meet minimal college requirements in an online course under a teacher’s supervision. Students who pass the course don’t have to take remedial courses at Tennessee community colleges. Here’s what the Vanderbilt/Harvard study found:

            • SAILS, which has been adopted by more than half of Tennessee high schools, succeeded in shifting math remediation from colleges back to high schools, and many more students were able to enroll in credit-bearing courses when they got to community colleges. “Since Tennessee students are required to take four years of math in high-school courses,” say Boatman and Kane, “the shift did not increase high-school math course-taking, making this a cost-saving strategy for taxpayers and, perhaps most important, college students.” 

            • However, only about half of SAILS participants passed credit-bearing math courses in their community colleges. This did not represent an improvement over what had occurred before the program. Two possible reasons: the self-paced nature of the SAILS course may not be well suited to students who struggle in math, and students would benefit from more small-group instruction.

            “Tennessee has the right idea in shifting remediation to high school and reducing the cost and delay of remediation on college campuses,” say Boatman and Kane, “but senior year of high school may be too late to start.” A better idea would be to start in ninth grade, as a program in Chicago Public Schools did with a double-period algebra course for freshmen: this approach resulted in improved high-school math achievement, test scores, graduation rates, and college enrollment. 

            In addition, some colleges are experimenting with ways to change the dynamic. Two examples: the City University of New York’s Accelerated Study in Associate Program, which offers struggling students comprehensive advising, tutoring, and additional financial support; and Georgia State University, which reaches out to incoming students over the summer and has redesigned its introductory math courses and streamlined the advising system.

 

“Why We Need to Rethink Remediation” by Angela Boatman and Thomas Kane in 

The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 21, 2018 (Vol. LXV, #16, p. A28), 

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-We-Need-to-Rethink/245320; the authors can be reached at [email protected]and [email protected]. 

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7. Showing Interest in Colleagues’ Work Through Our Questions

            “Be interested in others, if you hope to be interesting to others,” says Dan Rockwell in this Leadership Freakarticle. “Genuine curiosity feels like love and respect.” But in his coaching of school leaders, he’s noticed that many aren’t good question askers. He suggests posing more questions and following them up with a second question. Some examples:

-   What’s the toughest part of your job? What would be true for you and others if you were great at that?

-   What’s the most interesting part of your day? How does that part bring value to the team?

-   What are you doing at work when you feel you’re most alive? What does that energy say about you?

-   If you challenged yourself to achieve more in only one area, what area would you focus on? What makes it important for you?

-   What compliments do you most frequently receive? What might you do differently today to maximize the talents other see in you?

-   What are you doing when time flies? How do those activities add value to others?

-   What are you doing for others that you’d like to brag about? How might you engage in brag-worthy behaviors? 

-   If you challenged yourself to improve as a leader, what one area would you focus on? What does getting better in that area do for you and for others?

-   How do you want your team to feel when you’re around? What will you do todayto create opportunity for them to feel that way? 

 

“Questions That Bring People to Life” by Dan Rockwell in Leadership Freak, December 19, 2018, https://leadershipfreak.blog/2018/12/19/questions-that-bring-people-to-life/

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8. Short Items:

            a. A Shakespeare resources website – Thissite https://bit.ly/2s2L2Oehas a rich variety of resources for reading and studying the Bard’s plays and sonnets. 

 

“96 Incredibly Useful Links for Teaching and Studying Shakespeare” at OnlineCollege.org, spotted in “Whose Ghost Is It, Anyway? Teaching Shakespeare Using Primary Documents” by Sheridan Steelan in English Journal, November 2018 (Vol. 108, #2, p. 39-47); Sheridan can be reached at [email protected]. 

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            b. A five-minute video on 2018 – This Vox compilation powerfully captures many of the high and low points of the year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tJJnC26_uw

 

“Another Year, Another End-of-Year Video” by Vox, December 28, 2018

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