Thoughts for a New School Year

Welcome back to a new school year!  To me, a new school year, a new beginning, is one of the most exciting times of the year.  I always make my "new year's" resolutions at the beginning of the school year, rather than at the beginning of the calendar year, and have goals and plans for the school year. For children, too, the year marks a new beginning and new opportunities.

Recently, I was reviewing a book that I've very much enjoyed and appreciated -- Carol Dweck's Mindset: The New Psychology of Success -- and it reminded me of an NPR article I had clipped last fall  relating to the mental attitude people have about learning and about struggling to learn something new.  The gist of both of them, which I think is very relevant to the beginning of a new school year, is that a student's mental attitude about learning, and his/her attribution of results to effort or to ability, can make a huge difference to his/her success in learning and success in life.

Mindset begins with this scene:

"When I was a young researcher, just starting out, something happened that changed my life.  I was obsessed with understanding how people cope with failures, and I decided to study it by watching how students grapple with hard problems.  So I brought children one at a time to a room in their school, made them comfortable, and then gave them a series of puzzles to solve. . .  I expected differences among children in how they coped with the difficulty, but I saw something I never expected. . .

"Confronted with the hard puzzles, one ten-year-old boy pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and cried out, "I love a challenge!". . .  What's wrong with them, I wondered.  I always thought you coped with failure or you didn't cope with failure.  I never thought anyone loved failure.  Were these alien children or were they on to something?. . .

"What did they know?  They knew that human qualities, such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated through effort.  And that's what they were doing -- getting smarter.  Not only weren't they discouraged by failure, they didn't even think they were failing.  They thought they were learning. . .

"I, on the other hand, thought human qualities were carved in stone.  You were smart or you weren't.  It was that simple.  If you could arrange successes and avoid failures (at all costs), you could stay smart.  Struggles, mistakes, perseverance were just not part of this picture. . .

"Whether human qualities are things that can be cultivated or things that are carved in stone is an old issue.  What these beliefs mean for you is a new one: What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait?" [emphasis added]

The article, published on NPR, entitled "Struggle for Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning" by Alix Spiegel (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/12/164793058/struggle-for-smarts-how-eastern-and-western-cultures-tackle-learning), begins with the story of a teacher in Japan who chose the student who was struggling to put his work on the board. The student continued to work until he finally succeeded, without seeming concerned about his struggle.  The article continues:

"In Eastern cultures. . . it's just assumed that struggle is a predictable part of the learning process.  Everyone is expected to struggle in the process of learning, and so struggling becomes a chance to show that you, the student, have what it takes emotionally to resolve the problem by persisting through that struggle."

If you assume that intelligence is fixed and that struggling means you are not very smart, you will tend to give up easily and avoid situations where you will be seen as not smart.  On the other hand, if you believe that intelligence is fluid and you can learn by working hard, you will tend to persist and will be more likely to succeed.  Other researchers have investigated the messages given to children by different kinds of praise, finding that when children are praised for their effort they learn persistence, but when they are praised for being smart they tend to persist less and give up more easily when a task is difficult.  In the article, Spiegel gives another example of a mother talking to her son about his success in a piano competition, explaining his success as a result of his efforts:  "You practiced and practiced with lots of energy," she tells him.  "It got really hard, but you made a great effort. . ."

From everything I've read, it seems that helping students (and ourselves) avoid a fixed mindset and become more willing to struggle and learn would be a big contributor to their (and our) success, so one thing that all of us could do is be aware of our own assumptions and beliefs in this area and work on attributing success to effort and reinforcing kids in the belief that hard work will result in learning and success.

And I think I will reread Mindset in its entirety as I work on my new [school] year's resolutions.  Here's to a great new year for everyone!

What Kids Need Most -- Sharing With Their Parents

In my last post (quite a while ago, to my embarrassment) I talked about the necessity for a good home-school partnership to support children in their learning.  Recently, two events have pushed me to think even more about parent involvement and how important sharing events and activities with their parents is to children's growth and development.

The two events that got me thinking in this direction were Neary Noodle Night, which was in the beginning of February, and our Book Fair, Art Show, & Ice Cream Social in the beginning of March.  Both are wonderful family events that should help to bring parents and children together and give them a good opportunity to share some of the things that are going on at school as well as to socialize with other parents and kids.  Both evenings worked well that way for some families, but not as well for others, and I am doing some thinking about how to help make them work well for everybody.  What happened at both events was that some parents and children spent the evening together, sharing the discussions about the baskets, chatting over dinner, or playing together in the gym at Noodle Night, shopping for books, chatting over ice cream, and looking together at the art on display at the March event, while other parents spent the evening socializing with other adults while their children ran through the halls and played with each other.  Aside from the inevitable behavior problems on the part of some of the unsupervised children, I was concerned that the evening didn't seem to work as intended -- to give parents and children time for sharing a school-related event -- and am thinking about how the evenings could be restructured to work better, to be fun for both kids and adults and to create that kind of sharing.

Along these lines, I bought a book at our Book Fair that I think relates -- The Mother-Daughter Book Club by Heather Vogel Frederick.  It's actually the beginning of a series, of which I have now read five, and I think it provides a great picture of parents and kids sharing an activity which at first was regarded rather negatively by the girls ("Oh, Mom!  Do we have to?"), but which over time resulted in great sharing and increased closeness between the girls and their mothers and gave the parents a window into the girls' world that allowed them to further guide them in their development.  (I do recommend the series, by the way -- they are enjoyable reading with some good learning and growth on the part of the main characters.)  I'm wondering if we could make some changes to our family events that would foster that kind of sharing as the primary aspect of the evening. Even if kids say they want to be with their friends, deep down they actually crave sharing with a parent and that means much more to them than an evening spent playing with friends. And, as kids grow older, they need parent involvement and guidance more than ever, even if they say they don't!

"The Customer Is Always Right" and Other Myths

This weekend I took my car in to the shop for a couple of small things -- a tire change, an alignment, and replacing a burnt out bulb.  When I picked up the car, I found that there had been a miscommunication and something different had been done than what I thought I had requested.  I found myself getting annoyed over the miscommunication, and the manager very quickly moved to make things right. I appreciated that but was upset that I had become annoyed and crabby about the whole thing.  I apologized, and so did they, and things ended on a good note.  But this incident made me think about the whole saying, "The customer is always right," which of course is not true.  The customer is NOT always right!  Sometimes the customer is wrong!  Sometimes the customer is crabby! Sometimes the customer is rude!  It's a scenario in which the pendulum has perhaps swung too far, when the interactions should instead always be polite and courteous on both sides.

This incident led me to thinking about one way in education in which the pendulum has perhaps also swung too far.  Years ago, it was entirely attributed to a child if he/she didn't learn.  It was reasonable for a teacher to say, "I taught it, but they didn't learn it," and it was thought that some children just couldn't learn everything that others could.  In my elementary school years, there was a boy in my class who was still unable to read and write by 8th grade.  He sat in the last row in the back of the class and took all the same tests as everyone else, only all he did was write his name on them.  We corrected each other's papers, and if you got his, all you had to do was write a big "F" on top of it. Reading this in 2012, it's appalling that no one did anything more to help him (although, of course, it's possible that someone tried and I just didn't know about it).  At the time, though, it was just taken for granted that some kids were "good at school" and others weren't.  (For those who are wondering, he dropped out of school as soon as he legally could, and did quite well in life.)

Now, of course, this scenario could not happen.  When we have a child who is having difficulty with something, for example with reading, we do everything we can to figure out what the problem is and do everything we can to help him/her succeed.  I think this is wonderful, and would never want to return to the "good old days" on this front.  However, in some ways I think that the pendulum has perhaps swung too far in the other direction, where teachers and schools are accountable for everything children are accountable for too little.  Sometimes the reason a child isn't learning well is that the child is not doing his/her homework, is not practicing his/her math facts, is not paying attention and working hard in class, is not managing to write down his/her assignments, and/or has been absent  because of a family vacation and is not putting in the extra time needed to catch up.   For children to learn well, there needs to be a solid partnership between home and school.  Educators do need to do everything in their power to help children learn, going "the extra mile" and working hard to make things work for every child in their school, but children also need to put in their best efforts, doing their homework, working hard in class, and putting in extra time when needed, and parents need to help children with this, modeling it for them and reminding them about the importance of working hard.  In my view, the pendulum should be in the middle -- with children supported in their learning by a good partnership between home and school.

Musings About Children and Consequences

Since my last post, I've been doing some thinking about kids learning from the natural consequences of their actions and thought I'd write a bit about my own experience with that, as well as sharing a recent book that relates -- How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, by Paul Tough.  Tough's thesis is that helping children develop curiosity, perseverance, and other character traits is essential in helping them achieve success in life, and he has some interesting thoughts on that. 

In my own experience, some years ago, when I was perhaps 8 or 9 years old, I went with my family to the annual county fair.  I had saved up a fair amount of money for the occasion, maybe $1.25 or so, which in those days was significant.  That evening, among all the rides and treats and exciting experiences, I saw a booth where you could take a chance on choosing a colored plastic duck, out of many different-colored ducks floating in a stream past the front of the booth, that would win you a wonderful stuffed animal.  I was sucked in, and spent the rest of my money on chances, but did not win the stuffed animal.  In tears, I told my father what had happened.  He was sympathetic and caring, but did not rescue me.  He did not give me more money so I could go on rides, and he and I had a conversation, sympathetic and caring on his side, but also very clear, about decision-making and choices, and the risks of gambling.  I spent the rest of the evening just looking at the exhibits, except that the whole family had supper at one of the booths and at the end of the evening we all went on one ride before going home. 

Looking back on this incident, it seems to me that my parents achieved an excellent balance in helping me deal with this problem.  They listened, were sympathetic and caring, but did not rescue me.  Instead, they helped me learn an important lesson from my choices.  What would I have learned if they had rescued me?  Would I have learned to think about and be responsible for the consequences of my decisions?  Or would I have learned to feel entitled, and to think that someone would or should always rescue me?

 As an elementary school principal, I often see parents wanting to rescue their children, to keep them from feeling sadness, discomfort, disappointment or frustration, or experiencing negative consequences.  While understanding that it is difficult to see your child being unhappy, I am concerned about this trend.  In the elementary years, the consequences for a child are not that large; every year, the consequences of poor decisions become larger.  At 8 years old, the consequence of my poor decision-making about money was that I was unable to go on another ride that evening.  At 28, as an adult, the consequences of my taking a similar risk, gambling with a large part of my funds, would have been much more serious.  It was an important lesson to learn at a young age, when the consequences were relatively small.  Similarly, if kids learn in elementary school that hitting another student, for example, results in missing recess, in high school they may not have to learn that lesson by being suspended or expelled.  Or if they learn in the early years that not studying for tests results in lower performance, they will avoid experiencing the results of poor academic grades in the years in which academic performance has high-stakes consequences.  Of course, it's always a judgment call as to how to intervene in any particular situation for a particular child, but in general it seems to me to be true that people (children, adults, all of us) learn from the results of their actions, and while taking care to be kind, caring, and gentle, we adults need to allow that to happen for kids.

Does More Paperwork Really Improve Student Achievement?

At last Wednesday's school committee meeting, the members discussed a set of model resolutions to be considered at the upcoming MASC conference (the Massachusetts Association of School Committees).  One of the resolutions, with which I heartily agree, called for the formation of a special commission to review the government-mandated reports and data required of school districts in order to determine the extent to which the reports and data benefit student achievement or simply take time that could otherwise be used in the service of teaching and learning.

In the same set of resolutions, it was noted, with respect to the new educator evaluation system, that "the formal regulations, guidelines, rubrics and resource advisory materials produced by DESE [the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] to ensure compliance by educators and policymakers as they implement [the new evaluation system] are comprised of more than 375 pages of instructions and over 110,000 words."  I believe that at this point I have read all these pages (!!!), and I personally find the complexity of the new educator evaluation system, and the paperwork required by it, rather amazing.  There are four overall standards of performance for teachers.  Under the standards are 16 "indicators," and under the "indicators" are 33 "elements," with four defined levels for each "element."  To make a determination of performance under each element, there are 3 categories of evidence to be used and an evidence tracking form to be completed.  Overall, there is a defined 5 step evaluation cycle, 4 different types of plans, and 10 different forms to be completed and used throughout the process.  The whole thing is amazingly complex and requires a large amount of paperwork.  In general, in the corporate world, adequately supervising more than 10 direct reports is considered very difficult to do, but in schools principals generally are responsible for supervising 50 or more people, a task that is challenging enough already without adding more paperwork. There is nothing in the new law and regulations to provide schools with more resources to do this work, other than a provision for providing a "subsidy" to consultants who can be hired by school systems to "train" everyone in how to implement the system. (Perhaps in another post I'll discuss the topic of government regulations that are so complex that schools don't have the resources to figure out how to comply with them and thus have to hire consultants to develop forms and programs -- there are better uses for district funds, such as purchasing materials and supplies for classroom use, or funding useful professional development for teachers.)  In any event, I believe that the level of paperwork required by the new evaluation system will actually make it more difficult to provide good supervision by taking time away from actually meeting with, observing, and working with teachers and students.

Overall, my prediction is that the new system will focus everyone on the onerous task of just completing the paperwork,  and that it will decrease the time that can actually be spent in observing instruction and discussing it with teachers.  It makes me wonder -- are there really people who believe that requiring more paperwork of school administrators is going to contribute positively to student achievement, and how did they come to that conclusion? 

Where Do They Learn It? Some Thoughts on Bullying

This past Monday (Oct. 1st), there was an interesting item in The Boston Globe entitled "Bullying Common On Children's Shows," regarding a recent study of children's television programs by Indiana University researchers.  The study, which was published in the September Journal of Communications, reviewed three episodes of each of 50 popular children's television shows and found that some form of aggression was portrayed on 92% of the programs, "most commonly verbal types such as insulting and teasing, but also nonverbal types such as eye rolling, finger pointing, and ignoring."  The researchers also noted that in most cases the aggressors were portrayed as popular or attractive and were not either punished or rewarded as a result of the behavior.  In other words, it seems that teasing and bullying are frequently shown as normal, expected behavior.  This morning, I read an unrelated article -- a synopsis in the Marshall Memo of a recent article in the Harvard Business Review about the power of social norms to change behavior -- that seems very relevant to this problem.  The HBR article described research demonstrating that simply communicating social norms was amazingly effective in getting people to change their behavior.  For example, in hotel bathrooms a message saying that the majority of people do re-use their towels resulted in a large increase in the number of people re-using their towels, and a message in Britain to citizens in a particular town stating that "over 93% of citizens living in your town pay their tax on time" resulted in an increase in timely collections from 57 to 86 percent.   It seems to me that our children are hearing the message from the media that teasing and bullying is normal, expected behavior and/or that most people speak to others in this manner.

This is a difficult message to counter, as much as parents and teachers work at it, but we clearly need to keep trying.  (Perhaps we also need to push for changes in what is portrayed to children, but that's another topic.)  After reading the HBR article, one thing that occurred to me was to advocate for continual, explicit teaching about consideration for others.  For example, I remember that as a child I was continually hearing messages from my parents regarding consideration for others -- "Don't leave that in the way; someone might trip over it," "Don't take the last brownie; someone else may want it," and the like.  I wonder sometimes if those messages are getting lost in the high-speed pace of life these days.  As I drive into a supermarket parking lot, for example, and find shopping carts left all over rather than being returned, or cars parked in places that make it difficult for others to park, I wonder if children are instead getting the message that thinking only of one's own convenience and not of others is OK.  I think I am going to experiment at school with messages that indicate social norms ("most people avoid saying mean things to others," and the like -- whatever I can find based on facts), and I would encourage all of us to do more explicit teaching of consideration for others, like returning that shopping cart while saying to a child something like, "We need to return this so it's not in other people's way and so others can use it."

It will take all of us to change what we, as a society, are teaching our children, and I do believe that this continual explicit teaching, by our modeling and our language, will be more effective than any anti-bullying assembly or program can possibly be.  I also think we should push for changes in programming for children to more truly portray how most people really do treat each other so that children learn that the norm is politeness and civility, not teasing and bullying.

What Really Counts

I was talking with a teacher this morning about her goals for the various children in her class.  She was able to talk about each child, and had a good idea already, even though it's early in the year, about what she wanted to emphasize in working with each of them.  Now you may be thinking, "OK, so probably one child has more difficulty with place value in math and another child has more difficulty with spelling multisyllable words. . ." and the like.  Yes, it's certainly true that this teacher knows all that, but the goals she was talking about this morning for the children in her care are more individual and more important than that.  With one child, she will be working on helping him to become more organized, to slow down and plan his work, to put more thought into it.  With another child, she will be working on helping her to become more assertive and to analyze and express her opinions more effectively.  With yet another child, she will be working on helping him to see others' points of view and to be more kind to his classmates and a better friend. . .

I'm sure that each of us has had some wonderful teachers in our past whom we remember to this day.  The teachers who made a difference in my life were the ones who knew me as a person, who showed me a new way to look at what I could possibly accomplish, and helped to open my horizons.  I remember my high school German teacher who took the time to work with me on my senior piano recital piece and sparked my confidence and love of music, and my 7th grade teacher who opened up the world of poetry to me and helped me to think that I could write. . .  I could go on, and I think that every one of us has stories like that and every parent has stories about a teacher who made that kind of difference in the life of his/her child.

I have recently finished reading an interesting book about children and character (How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, by Paul Tough) that reveals and emphasizes the importance of character, including qualities like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control, for achievement and success in life.  These qualities are better predictors of both academic success and success in life, and Tough demonstrates how schools that work with children to develop these qualities help to give them the foundation for success that they need.  Today I also read a blog post discussing the other side of the same concept -- how blind faith in numbers leads to obsession with winning and failure to realize what's really important ("How Our Love For Numbers Warps School Reform", from "The Answer Sheet" in the Washington Post).  As noted in this entry:

In education, the question “How do we assess (kids, teachers, schools)?” has morphed over the years into “How do we measure…?” We’ve forgotten that assessment doesn’t require measurement — and, moreover, that the most valuable forms of assessment are often qualitative (say, a narrative account of a child’s progress by an observant teacher who knows the child well) rather than quantitative (a standardized test score). Yet the former may well be brushed aside in favor of the latter — by people who don’t even bother to ask what was on the test. It’s a number, so we sit up and pay attention. Over time, the more data we accumulate, the less we really know.

As you may have noticed, the school MCAS scores were released this week.  We did well, which I'm happy about, but I am much more happy about the fact that our teachers work with children in the way I described in the first paragraph of this post, and I hope we don't ever lose sight of that.