Doing it Right the First Time

     As the principal of a Title I eligible campus, I have the privilege of working with a wide variety of kids.  They come from incredibly diverse backgrounds and represent multiple cultures.  We have great kids here at The Ranch!  For a myriad of reasons, our students sometimes have conceptual gaps.  High mobility, language barriers and family dynamics are just a few of the battles many of our kids face.   Because of these gaps, it is easy to get swept up into a variety of interventions designed to move them to where they need to be academically.  As an Instructional Leadership Team, we recognized how important it is that we provide quality instruction the first time.  It makes me think of this quote from Steve Jobs:

With this in mind, we began the work of describing some of the elements we believed were fundamental to quality first time instruction. 

      Bell-to-bell engagement - Our time with students is fixed and it is imperative that we maximize it.  We were purposeful in not describing this as bell-to-bell instruction.  We did not want to imply that teachers should stand and deliver, in a lecture format for a full period.  Even the best orator would struggle to keep folks engaged for this amount of time.  I would recommend the text, “Eight Myths of Student Disengagement” (Fredricks) to anyone seeking to gain a deeper understanding of how engagement influences learning.  Specifically, I appreciate the differentiation between behavioral engagement which is low level, on-task compliance and cognitive engagement.  Cognitive engagement involves those activities that cause our students to be challenged and think at higher levels.  Just because students are working in a quiet compliant manner, does not mean they are being stretched to think and learn.

     Clear objectives – Sometimes the most obvious and basic things get overlooked.  A clearly-stated, overtly-shared objective is one of those basic elements related to effective teaching.  Our collective campus expectation is to have the objective written as an “I can…” statement.  Without this clear direction for what is to be learned, even the most active lesson can become little more that entertainment.  Entertainment does not always equal learning.

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    High level questioning – Questioning that leads to learning is an art.  Initially, this area of our model was focused on moving toward more open-ended questions that promote high cognition.  In an effort to make this work come to life, we did a study of the verbs in our standards (TEKS).  We pulled the most common verbs and organized them according to Bloom’s Taxonomy.  We then created posters that are in all our classrooms that have this information.  We call these “High Side” posters.  These are a reminder to our teachers of this expectation during lessons and in planning. Over time we have expanded our focus on questioning to include wait time and randomizing who answers the question.

      Technology as a tool – What an amazing time to be alive!  Technology that was once science fiction is readily available and has the potential to bring us together like never before.  At times, we can get more focused on how amazing the tool is rather than what we need to accomplish that might involve the use of the tool.  I think about how I love to stroll through Home Depot and look at new hand tools.  I have a recent memory of purchasing a drill and then looking for something that needed a hole in it!  Historically, purchases have been made for schools in a similar fashion.  After the purchase, teachers are made aware of the latest hardware or software and then look for what to do with it.  Our belief is that we should identify what we want to do instructionally and then look for the best strategy to reach our goal.  This may very well involve a technology tool.  We are delving into the SAMR model and trying to move to more transformative uses of these tools.

             Differentiated – This is one of the great challenges for teachers is working with a group of students who have a variety of background experiences and competencies.  If you want students to be motivated from within, differentiation is key.  Dan Pink’s work on motivation is a solid place to start to understanding the "why" for differentiation, Check out the video, “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.”  He identifies 3 areas that drive an individual’s intrinsic motivation.  These include autonomy, mastery, and a sense of purpose.  Two of these three are reflected in a differentiated classroom.  Central to autonomy is learner choice.  Masterful teachers find ways for students to have locus of control within a framework that targets a standard.  As humans, we sometimes avoid things that we don’t feel competent at.  I am not a good dancer… yet! Because I don’t feel very masterful at the art of dance, I avoid it.  This same issue abounds in our classrooms.  Students choose not to engage because they are not masterful at the level of activity we put in front of them.  The challenge is to start at a level that they can find mastery and bring them to where the need to be.  It is great for us to promote high standards, but we must provide a scaffold to those who have a large instructional gap to leap.  This is why differentiation for readiness level is so necessary for many students.  Central to our understanding was Carol Tomlinson's work.

     Assessment guiding instruction – So often it seems that assessments are more like an autopsy than a checkup.   Of course it all about how we use the information.  Retests and do-overs after focused post assessment instruction support the use of data in a formative way.  Rick Stiggins does an excellent job of helping us understand the difference between assessments OF and FOR learning..  Summative assessment has its place for reporting but formative assessment is what drives student growth and learning. 

     With these areas identified in our Accomplished Teaching Model, we began our year-long staff development focused on these areas.  My next blog will discuss how we worked to identify what a passionate educator looks like.