As I have mentioned in previous posts, supporting students in making their own choices and asking their own questions has been a focus of our curriculum work at the ISP. To that end, we recently reorganized a third grade unit on sound and the scientific process to allow students to explore their own questions and curiosities about sound. Students either asked a question about sound, developed a hypothesis, created a plan, and interpreted their results, or they built an instrument and discussed what they learned about pitch, frequency, and volume in the process of making the instrument.  Last week, we had a Sound Salon in which students shared their experiments, instruments, and insights.

When discussing the experience with a one of my students, I asked him what he had learned from the experience. He said that his hypothesis was wrong. When I probed further and asked what he learned from his hypothesis being wrong his reply was fantastic. He said, "I learned that I am not always right." This would be a profound insight for most students but this is a student who will argue and insist he is right when there is any conflict with peers or teachers. This is DEEP learning for him. What a success.

Helping students to ask questions, test hypothesis in a systematic way, and learn to be wrong is such an important life lesson. It is how knowledge is built and how we learn to be resilient and to persist to uncover answers to our questions. One way to provide students with opportunities for this type of learning is to provide space and time  for them to be scientists. Below, find an example and links to more from education.com, a guest contributor this month.

Objective:Find out whether planting seeds in certain directions will affect how fast it germinates... or whether it germinates at all.
Research Questions:What factors affect seed germination?
Plants grow through a process called photosynthesis, when the chlorophyll located in the chloroplast of the plant cells grabs sunlight and starts the reactions that are needed to make the plant grow. Water is also needed in the growth equation, because like humans and animals, plants need moisture to quench their thirst. But does the angle of the seed in the soil affect the plant's ability to absorb sun and water? Let's find out.
For more fun and engaging science activities, go to Education.com!
Materials:

• Twelve bean seeds (same age)
• Four plant pots
• Soil
• Water
• Sunlight

Experimental Procedure:

1. Put some soil in each plant pot up to the ledge.
2. Poke three spaced-out holes into each of the four pots.
3. In the first pot, insert three seeds (one in each hole) vertically. Close the holes up and give it a pat. Label the pot “Vertical-Up.”
4. In the second pot, insert three seed vertically, but inversed. Close the holes up and give it a pat. Label the pot “Vertical-Down.”
5. In the third pot, insert three seeds horizontally, with the concave part up. Cover the holes with soil and give it a pat. Label this pot “Horizontal-Up.”
6. In the fourth pot, insert four seeds in horizontally, with the convex part up. Cover the holes with soil and give it a pat. Label this pot “Horizontal-Down.”
7. Take these pots to a spot with adequate sunlight and give each a little water (measure the same amount).
8. Observe which seeds germinate first.

Terms/Concepts: germination; plant care; plant growth process; seeds
References:

• Identify the stages of bean seed germination.html
• Gardening Basics
• Raven, Peter H.; Ray F. Evert, Susan E. Eichhorn (2005).Biology of Plants, 7th Edition. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company Publishers. pp.504–508.

Author: Sofia PC

In The End of Average, Todd Rose provides a history and overview of the development of what he calls “averagism” in the structure of our economy, educational systems and beliefs, and medical systems and research. He traces the roots of Taylorism embedded in our current paradigms of social science research and institutions and challenges their underlying assumptions with the Jaggedness Principal, the Context Principle, and the Pathways Principle. He then offers some ideas about how refocusing on the individual could be done in practice within our current structures and systems.
 
If averagism and Taylorism are concepts that are new to you, then Part 1 of his book gives a concise, historical overview of the revolution of education and the economy in the 20th century and the underpinning assumptions that emerged even before that time. In Part 2, he explores and explains his challenges to this paradigm.
 
The Jaggedness Principle is the idea that one person cannot be defined by a single IQ score, GPA, class rank, SAT score, etc. It is the idea that a single, one dimensional number tells you nothing about the more complicated profile of strengths and challenges that define a person and is thus useless. Those of us who work in Learning Support and are familiar with these assessments know that better than most, and so there was nothing especially new or novel in this idea. The subtests and cluster scores tell us more about the profile of someone and how to individualize their learning. For those who are less familiar with these concepts, then it provides a clear description and explanation of how a jagged profile and knowledge of that, should inform how education might be individualized for all students – not just those with testing.
 
The Context Principle is the idea that skills and behaviors, personality traits, or whatever terminology you might prefer, cannot be considered in absolute or isolation, but are highly dependent on context. Again, those of us who work with children know this better than most. A student might work really hard and be very dedicated to the science class where he loves the teacher and is motivated by that relationship and barely try in his English class where he feels the teacher does not like him. A kid will spend hours outside of school problem solving difficulties with the code for the robot they are building and not complete their math homework. If you don’t understand the student in front of you – what their passions are, what motivates them, and what inspires them, then you may miss their gifts and only focus on the difficulties that might be situational or contextual.
 
The Pathways Principle is the idea that there is not one single right way to develop, learn, succeed, and progress through life. This is the most damning of current educational systems and practice. The idea that we are in age based classrooms, progressing in groups through predetermined curriculum in a predetermined time is the biggest challenge that education must answer for in the coming years. It makes no sense any more. Again, those of us who work in education know this, but the question is how.

You can probably tell that I found most of the book to be things that I already know or have already considered or questioned. Those not in education or less critical of our current systems might find it more provocative. Either way, it is highly readable and there are examples from business, medical research, and education that explain and illustrate his ideas. He then suggests that we might use credetialling and competencies to create differing pathways for individuals through our educational system, though does not go into much depth for how this might be done. For an in depth case study for how this might be done, I offer a companion text, How to Innovate: The Essential Guide for Fearless School Leaders by Mary Moss Brown and Alisa Berger.
 
In How to Innovate, Berger and Brown offer an in depth look at the iSchool in New York, including the choices and challenges they faced. They offer practicle tools that school leaders might use to consider their own context and explain how the iSchool has used the credentialing and competencies advocated by Rose to accelerate students through their state Regents exam if they are ready or provide them extra time to study and practice for these exams and take longer if required. Once students have passed the Regents exams that are required to graduate in the state of New York, they are involved in a highly individualized pathway guided by advisors through internships and independent study tailored to their intesterst, skills, and goals.  As a leader, this case study and supporting tools are much more practicle in terms of thinking about how to apply the theory presented by Rose. As such, I find them to be good compliments of each other and which is more relevant to you will depend on how far along you are in your thinking on this issue and what role you might play in the school.
 
Both texts challenge the 20th century models for education which served us well in the past but will not meet the rapidly changing needs of the 21st century work force. The End of Average describes the history of our current system and some compelling reasons why we need to change. How to Innovate provides a framework for how we might actually do that in practice. As a leader with a highly practical streak, I find How to Innovate to offer more guidance for putting theory into practice and thus more helpful in my next job where I will be focused on personalizing learning in our school context. I look forward to testing out some of these ideas and would be curious what your experiences have been as you seek to develop a system more responsive to the needs of individual learners.
 
 

Resources:

Brown, Mary Moss, and Berger, Alisa (2014). How to Innovate: The Essential Guide for Fearless School Leaders. New York: Teachers College Press

Rose, Todd (2016). The End of Average: Unlocking our Potential by Embracing What Makes us Different. New York: Harper Collins.

In the last couple of years, relevance and curiosity have been key areas of focus within our school goals. We want students to know who they are as learners and how to move forward. We want learning to be relevant to their needs. And, we want the curiosity and interests of students to be a larger part of guiding their learning. As such, we have been seeking ways for students to have a greater voice in communicating with their parents about how they are doing and in setting their own goals. To facilitate that end, the Elementary School has made several changes to the ways we communicate with parents.
 
One change is the morning mixer. It is something that Early Childhood classrooms have been doing for a number of years and we have now extended it through out the whole school. During the morning mixer, which occurs at least twice a year, parents come into the classroom for about thirty minutes and the students share with them things that they are doing in the classroom currently. This might include teaching them math games, sharing with them some writing they are doing, reading with them their current literature circle book, or anything else. The purpose is to give parents a snap shot of what is happening in the classroom and allow they to see, from their child’s eye, how things are going and what they are learning. Getting parents in the classroom on a regular basis like this has helped them to better understand what learning looks like in the classroom.

The second change is around our conferences with parents. For many years, we have had student lead conferences in the spring and we have written three report cards. We made a shift to only two report cards a couple years ago and with that shift, we recognized that we needed another way to communicate with parents. The first conference with parents is in mid October and it is only with the teacher. Then, parents receive the first report card just before the Christmas holiday and at the end of January, as a follow up to that communication, students lead goal setting conferences with their parents.
 
During the goal setting conference, students share how they have grown as a learner in several areas – math, reading, writing, units of inquiry, and skills and behavior. They share evidence of that growth with their parents and identify what they still need to work on to improve.  (You can see my daughter's example above) Many teachers chose to use the thinking frame from Harvard's Project Zero "I used to . . . , but now I  . . . " At that conversation, with input from parents and teacher, students pick one or two goals on which to focus first, including the steps they will take to reach this goal and how their teachers and parents can help them. (see again another example from my daughter below) Later in the spring, there is a student lead conference during which students will have an opportunity to share again their growth as a learner, including how they did on a goal that they had identified.

Last week was the second time that I participated in these conferences as a parent and as a Learning Support Teacher. I confess that last year, I had mixed thoughts about the experience. I witnessed many parents and students struggle with their role in this process and how to communicate their growth or set goals. This year, my experience was completely different. I observed time and time again students take charge of the conversation and speak eloquently about their growth while sharing evidence of it. They were honest in their reflections of themselves as learners and able to choose totally relevant goals – ones that I probably would have choosen for them.
 
One student who choose as a goal that he need to work on his ability to attend to instructions, when questioned, was able to very clearly explain what happens in his brain that interfers with his ability to attend. We were able to talk about what strategies might help his brain to make the switch to attend. It was extrodinary to hear him articulate so clearly to his mom and teachers what is happening for all of us to better understand and then better support him.
 
I was also struck by how many students choose not academic goals like improve my spelling or reading level, but skills and behaviors for learning. Many of them had to do with picking a smart seat for learning so they would not be distracted, taking and asking for help when needed, improving their team member skills when working in a group, etc. It was striking because this is what is important to them and also, these more global skills will of course have impact across all areas of their learning.
 
I would be curious to hear from you how you are using goal setting conferences in your school and what your experiences have been. For me, it was so empowering for students to be driving these conversations and ultimately made the goals most relevant to them. I will be curious to see in the spring if this impacts the success of these goals.

I bought this gem last summer from a favorite little shop in Durham, NC when we were home visiting. It is from Vintage Girl Designs if you want to support a lovely artist who mixes visual imagery, especially birds and flowers with inspiring, thought provoking quotes.

At the start of 2018, my family and I started a new routine that we have followed with mixed fidelity. Every time we thought of something we were thankful for, we wrote it on a piece of paper and put it in a jar. Tonight, as part of our New Year's festivities, we will read them over the course of the night to remind us of how fortunate we are and to acknowledge it. I can take no credit for this idea. I stole it from somewhere and to be honest, I am not even sure where or I would properly cite it. But there is much research that we live more fulfilling and more satisfying lives when we include some sort of practice of gratitude - of taking stock of all the things that went well and we are thankful for on a regular basis.

One of my child's teachers this year, includes it in her closing circle. Every day the students say one thing they are grateful for from the day. As I reflect on our work with all students, this seems to me a very gentle way to help kids to focus on and reflect on what went well. It seems this would help to build both positive beliefs about ones' self and to build a culture in the class of thankfulness and positive reflection. If we want kids to take risks and to have a growth mindset, they need help and support to appreciate the parts of that risk-taking that worked and helped them to grow and learn and not focus on what might not have gone well. Creating greater opportunities to do this in my classes in the second half of the year is one of my goals for 2019.

In this attitude of gratitude, I will highlight a few things from my professional life of 2018 for which I am very grateful.

• When I started this blog, I set myself a goal to complete at least one post per month. 2018 was the first year in which I succeed in that goal!!
• I had lots of opportunities to practice Cognitive Coaching with wonderful colleagues over the course of the year and to incorporate it more fully into my day-to-day work with students and teachers. I also had the opportunity to complete the Part 2 training which means I am fully certified. It has been the most meaningful professional learning I have done in awhile and I feel so lucky to be able to work with a cohort of people who can support each other as we learn this together.
  
• I had the opportunity to complete my first Principal Training Course. It was a great professional learning experience that challenged me in an area in which I have little experience.
• I was able to build relationships with my students that supported them to succeed. I am especially grateful for the partnerships with their parents and other teachers that allowed this to be possible.
  
• I so appreciate my colleagues at the International School of Prague where I have been fortunate to work these last 6 years. They have supported and challenged me for many years.
• I am excited to have accepted a new position at the American International School of Johannesburg for next year which will enable me to continue to grow in a different way. I am sure I will have lots to say here as I transition into a new school and role in the coming year.
• I appreciate that my daughters get to come with me to school everyday and am thankful for my colleagues, who have been their teachers all these years and helped to shape them into the learners they are today.
• I am lucky to have a partner who shares my profession, supports me, and is interested in continuing the adventure in a new place.

There is so much more I could share, but these are the highlights. I hope that 2018 brought you much for which to be thankful and encourage you to take a few minutes to reflect on those that have challenged you to grow and have supported you when needed. I have noted bigger things here, but it is often the little things day-to-day that have more impact. Don't forget these too.

I hope 2019 brings you peace, laughter, and much for which to be grateful.

Understood: for learning and attention issues

Raising and Extraordinary Person

Brain Highways

In 1951, Edward R.Murrow began a radio essay series called "This I believe". In 2005, NPR revisited the original idea and the project continues with This I believe.org. Murrow ended the first broadcast with the quote above. In listening to what others believe and how they have faced life, we can find connections, build our empathy, and find common ground in this increasingly divisive world. As conflict heats up in our political systems and our public discourse, we need to listen, really listen, to each other more than ever.

In that spirit, I am sharing my educational philosophy with you. It is what I believe about my role as an educator and the work I hope to do in my role as an educational leader. Here is a version of my educationally themed, this I believe essay. I challenge you to write your own.

Questions.  Wonderings.  The struggle to understand and make sense of the world around us. The curiosity and imagination to imagine the world in a different way. I am an educator because I believe in questions. I believe that this is how all learners, regardless of age, make sense of the world and take responsibility for our learning. The questions we ask direct our learning path and our journey through life. As educators, we have the tremendous responsibility to nurture and inspire that curiosity in our students, engage them in the inquiry process sparked by that curiosity, and empower them to act on what they have learned to impact the world around them.
 
I also believe that all students must have equal access to this remarkable learning journey. Educators must create learning environments that allow students to pursue the questions that are relevant to them with facilitators who can provide the necessary challenge or support they require. This level of personalized learning requires a high degree of collaboration among a team a teachers who share responsibility for the learning of the students they serve. It requires a commitment on the part of school leaders to create schedules that enable this degree of collaboration to occur among teachers. It requires structures to keep students and evidence of their learning at the center of these collaborative conversations to inform planning.  It requires systems to identify students who need extra support and challenge over time to ensure that interventions and accommodations are provided in a timely manner. It requires management to ensure that the experience of students and families who require additional services to access the curriculum can experience consistency across sections. It requires all professionals to be flexible enough in the way they understand their role to support the identified need of a child and not their label.
 
In short, it requires intention. Inclusion of students with unique learning needs does not happen by magic or accident. It happens because a school community embraces, not just accepts, a wide variety of learners and puts the supports, systems, structures, and challenges in place for them to be successful and for the teachers, parents, aides, administrators, and all stakeholders to be successful and committed to understanding and managing their needs.
 
I love working in International School because I believe in global citizenship and International Schools play such an important role in fostering connections across language and cultures. Yet, my roots are in public education and the belief that education is an absolute right of all. International schools, as a community, have been slow to embrace the joys and challenges of diversifying their student bodies to include students with a wider range of abilities and needs. This is changing. The questions that I am currently exploring center on what International Schools would look like if they included a broader range of abilities and how might I lead this change. It is my sincere wish to work with a school that seeks to live this question.
 

The brains of people with dyslexia are wired differently. They are more capable of globally processing visual-spatial information. Put another way, they tend to be gifted in their abilities of holistic inspection. This means that they are able to see the whole picture of visual spatial information and hold the relationships constant, regardless of how it is moved or rotated in space. This is a significant advantage for working within a virtual space, considering three-dimensional modelling, and understanding abstract visual-spatial representations. These are the skills required to be successful in computer programming, engineering, architecture, surgery, virtual reality, and many other in demand careers now and in the future. It is for these reasons that a great podcast on dyslexia called codpast, has a feature called How Dyslexics Will Rule the Future. (See the link below)

Learning to read changes how the brain is wired. The brains of humans are wired to develop language and speech. If babies are socially exposed to language from birth, they will learn to speak, almost automatically. This is not the case for reading. Children need to be provided with quite specific instruction and reading experiences at key developmental times for them to learn to read. We now know that exposure to a print rich environment is not enough. Direct instruction in letter-sound relationships, phonemic awareness, and reading and decoding strategies are essential for developing the brain connections required to become fluent readers. Through quality reading instruction and practice, we rewire our brains to become fluent readers. The brains of people with dyslexia take longer to develop efficiency in these pathways and require instruction and reading practice that allows them to over-learn the letter-sound relations. The good news is that we know what these interventions look like and that the brain is pliable enough to allow us to develop fluency in reading when these interventions are in place.

The Understood website is an excellent resource for finding information about learning differences. Follow this link below to experience what it is like to have a learning difference such as dyslexia.

So, what can you do in your classroom to help support your students with dyslexia?

• Explicitly teach phonemic awareness, letter-sound relationships, spelling patterns, syllabification rules, and decoding strategies
• Use a multi-sensory approach to teaching and practicing spelling, word patterns, and sight words
• Allow for alternate mediums for consuming and producing information - podcasts, vlogs, etc
• Allow students to use technology to help accommodate for their difficulties - grammarly, text to speech and speech to text software
• Take a Universal Design Approach to instruction. What is good teaching for students with dyslexia is good teaching for a wide range of students. See lists of common accommodations here, here, and here.
  

While 40% of self-made millionaires have dyslexia, an extraordinary number of people with substance abuse and mental health difficulties, also have dyslexia and other learning differences. That is because the experience of school, when learning to read is difficult, can be devastatingly difficult. It is our responsibility as teachers to help students understand how their brain functions differently. We need them to understand the gifts, as well as the challenges, so they can leverage those gifts to overcome the challenge of their reading difficulties. Allow them chances to express and grow their gifts. Teach them about how their brain works. And get them the intervention they need to improve their reading. For inspiration and further information on this, see the excellent TED Talk by Kate Griggs below.

Welcome back to school! Every year as I begin to work with new students, teachers, and classes, I try to find interesting ways to introduce myself to my new learning communities. For many years I have read one of my favorite picture books called On a Beam of Light by Vladimir Radunsky. (Described here in brainpickings, one of my favorite blogs).  It is a great book to begin the year because it introduces Albert Einstein not as an already formed genius, but as an introverted little boy, who struggled at school, but who was so curious that his passion for wondering lead him to learn and to discover amazing ideas that changed the world.
 
With my students, I use it to uncover the idea that genius is not born and it is not about being smart. It is about being curious and creative. It is about asking questions and struggling to answer them, even if you are the first person to ever ask that particular question.  One must expect to have challenges along the way, as even the most famous scientist did, but to learn and grow, one must persist.
 
This year after reading the book in my smaller learning support groups, I asked students to complete a question burst. I asked them to write down any question they had, as fast as they could in five minutes. No question was too small and none too large. I did the same. Then we shared them and they let them sit until the next class and I  asked them to notice anything they were curious about between now and when we would meet again. In the next class, we completed another five minute question burst. They will then be asked to pick one of their questions to do a mini-research task and a short first writing about that topic. It is my hope that by using their curiosity to focus their work from the beginning of the year, the reading and writing we do together will be more relevant, and thus more interesting to them.

In the classes where I am co-teaching, I tried a new activity to introduce myself and my work in the class. In each class, I divided the students into six groups and gave them a very simple task to complete. However, each group had one special challenge when completing the task. One group could not talk, one group had words blanked out of their directions, one group could not open their eyes, one group could only use one arm, one group had the directions in Spanish, and one group had all the information and materials they needed with no special challenge. (A version of the activity can be found here). It takes the first group about 2 minutes to complete the task and in that time all the other groups get pretty frustrated and start saying that it is not fair. Then we all come together to reflect on our experiences.
 
Some observations from the various classes include:
 
S: “It wasn’t fair. We could not see and so had no idea what to do. After awhile we felt that there were scissors so we just started cutting. It turns out we cut the directions”
T: “So, you used what you knew about the tools to make a guess about what to do, but the task was too challenging for you to be successful?”
 
S: “We did not have any challenge. It was easy”
S: “That is not fair. You did not have the chance to have a challenge like everyone else. You did not get to try something hard”
T: “So the task was so easy for them, they did not have the opportunity to learn anything?”
 
S: “We could not talk, but we were able to point and gesture.”
T: “You were able to find strategies that helped you to overcome your challenge and then were successful?”
 
S: “We could only use one hand so we worked together. It was hard though.”
 
S: “Our directions were in Spanish. We had no idea what to do. After awhile, we tried to look around at others and copy them.”
T: “What would have helped you?”
S: “A translator or someone who speaks Spanish”
T: “Would having a translator have helped the group that could not see?”
S: “No. They needed someone to read the directions to them or tell them what to do”
T: “So different groups needed different strategies to help them succeed?”
 
In each class, I finished the discussion by noting that everyone comes to class with different experiences and challenges and so fair does not necessarily mean that everyone gets exactly the same work. We want everyone to grow as learners and so that means that we might need to give them a different level of support or challenge to be successful or to grow as a learner. I shared that my job is to work with their teachers to know them as  learners. Then we work together to plan the right level of support and challenge for them to grow.
 
I will leave you with another favorite – Zach Anner. He was born with cerebral palsy and has done so much in his acting and his very funny youtube channel to normalize his disability. He wants people to know him as a person first and not to define him by his disability. Check out this back to school Work Out Wednesday to inspire your own back to school workout. Have a great new school year!