Every child deserves...

"Every child deserves an education from someone who believes in them, who truly believes that this child is capable of becoming 

whatever they dream. 

This adult refuses to hear labels. This adult does not want to know how previous adults underestimated this child. When a child has an adult who believes in them in this way, that adult will authentically treat that child as something precious, possibly for the very first time in that child's life."             -Rob Darling  :) 

The consequences of Education

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The impact of education is possibly the most significant and consequential endeavor that will ever exist. 

However, the children being impacted by education are the least likely to fully comprehend it’s value. Their ability to see long-term is limited.  

That is why you (parent, teacher, paraprofessional, custodian, volunteer, neighbor, principal, relative, ROLE MODELS) are so important. 

I used to run. (Don't judge my current physical condition, there's an athlete under all of this still, somewhere....) From 2005 - 2012 I ran 13+ marathons (and hundreds of 1/2 marathon if you count all the long runs. I just could never get myself to pay for a half, since I ran them weekly for free. Sorry Halfers, but it's still only half. :P )

I ran with a guy who ran XC and the steeple chase in college. Brilliant guy, one of my most prized friends. He pushed me and challenged me and made me faster and puke, which I did not enjoy. But his most lasting advice was: 

               

"When things get tough, some runners look down. They focus on the next step. But not only does it make it more discouraging, it physically takes a toll. Your chest closes, your shoulders tense, your neck strains. Look up. Always look up. Focus on a location down the trail and work towards that. Once you reach it, pick another. Then another. Good runners focus on where they're going, not where they are."

We need to help our students see the end, not just each step that it takes to get there. 

Completing my Doctoral Dissertation, GRRRRRRR

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I've been working on this stupid thing for years, literally. It's been two years since I've completed all of the required coursework and passed my comprehensive exams for my doctorate in educational leadership. The only thing between me and wearing the goofy looking robe is my dissertation. There are 5 chapters for a dissertation. Chapter 1 is an introduction, 2 is a literature review, 3 is my research methodology, 4 is the results section and Chapter 5 is where I discuss the findings.

Once I was able to get approval from my dissertation chair, I submitted chapters 1-3 and was approved to move forward. I then received approval from the Institutional Review Board my first submission, and could start my research. The research itself consisted of a series of interviews with principals and teachers and only took me about 2-3 weeks to complete. I really liked that part. I really enjoyed sifting through all the data. That was May of 2015. Since then I've been writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting chapters 4 and 5. Once my chair and I get to a place where we think it's right, we submit to my two dissertation reviewers. Their jobs are to provide me with feedback. They're apparently experts at that.

I am SO sick of feedback!! We're not even talking about grammar and such yet. I'm still not to that fine of a level. We're still talking about about organization and flow and presenting qualitative data in a way that doesn't look or sound quantitative, which I thought did in revision #4, but then it sounded TOO qualitative and there wasn't enough narrative or synsthesis.....

I know, I'm boring you. But I do have a point.

I know the content of this topic and research inside and out now. The purpose of doing the doctoral research is to become the foremost expert on a topic or leadership problem that is relevant, unique and useful. All of the editing and revising and yelling at my computer that I've been doing over the last year has given me a level of understanding that will last forever.

Yes, I'm sure my dissertation chair could fix this for me. Yes, I've been to that point where I would have paid someone else to write it just to be done. But her perseverance and gentle pressure, applied relentlessly has forced me to productively struggle, or as James Nottingham calls it, "cognitively wobble." (click his name to watch a great video!) And it's because of this productive struggle that I'm earning and owning knowledge.

And that's my point. 

Knowledge must be earned for it to be lasting, to become synthesized and embedded. 

Do you want to know what my dissertation chair asked me to do tonight? Write a flippin' outline for chapter 4.  Can you believe that?!?! My dissertation is currently over 140 pages, all my own work and research and she wants me to stop and write an outline?!?!

But I did it. And in doing something as simple as an outline, I could clearly see how disjointed the chapter was, the portions that were redundant, and the portions that altogether didn't belong.

It is such a pain in the butt having a teacher who sees your full potential 

and knows that the learning is the true reward, and makes you struggle. (written in sarcasm font) 

Laser-like focus or a broad-strokes approach?

As we've been working with Dr. Ray Smith from Visible Learning he has said some things that have really resonated with me.

Today he said, "80% of your impact comes from 20% of your practice. You need to be sharply focused not well-rounded." He followed this comment up with, "Sharply focused means you must be very selfish as to where and how you use your time. Practices have disproportionate impact!"

This last week or so, we've been looking at our mid-year reading data for our students. We haven't made the growth that we had hoped for and began doing research into why not. There are many things we do well but the research provided some ways we can be doing better:

1. If we want to see measurable gains in reading, our master schedule needs to reflect reading as a priority. It didn't. But it will next week. We have revamped it to identify 90-minute reading blocks for 1st and 2nd and 90-minute literacy blocks for K. This will provide teachers with more time to intervene with their lowest students. We can coordinate better with our reading support program to make better use of their time pushing into these classes. 
2. Our afternoon intervention time will be focused on our most struggling readers. Yes, we'll still provide enrichment opportunities for those students who are already at or above grade level, but our job is not finished until we get all students above that line. 
3. The most effective reading intervention is good teaching. If we want our students to become better readers, we must become better at teaching reading. Starting this month we will have a full-time reading support coach. This position will not be to work directly with the students, per se, but more focused on helping teachers who want to become better. We have several new teachers this year and this will be a resource for them on how to allocate time, how to group students for small groups, and how to teach more effectively in small groups. The same also applies to our veteran teachers. Research is clear on how to most effectively deliver reading instruction and our reading coach is hands-down the most up-to-date person in our building, probably even the district, on reading research.

Change is uncomfortable. Change in the middle of the year is even tougher. But change, based on best practice, centered around improving student reading is a no brainer. :)

What Struggling Readers Need

http://blogs.longwood.edu/cdelgiorno/page/2/

"Why can't some kids read? It's because they have teachers who 

are not effective reading teachers."

                                   -Dick Allington

I was at the Struggling Readers summit in Portland this last weekend and had the privilege of hearing Dick Allington speak. This was not my first time, and certainly won't be my last. There's something very refreshing about sitting in an audience of educational professionals and having Allington tell you you're an idiot. It's strangely motivating. 

He and other experts provided us with great research. Here are some of the items that most stood out to me:

Dr. Anne Cunningham

What helps children (0-5 years) develop the skills and abilities that are linked to the children's later reading, writing and spelling? What do we need kinders to be able to do?

1. knowing the names of printed letters; being able to label them correctly and connect to letter sound
2. Being able to manipulate the sounds
3. Being able to rapidly name a sequence of letters, numbers, objects or colors
4. Being able to write one's own name or even isolated letters
5. Being able to remember the content of spoken language for a short time: simple multi-step instructions; working memory
6. Phonological STM (short term memory)

Early readers need Dialogic reading. Student who received a shared-reading intervention scored almost a 0.7 of a standard deviation higher than children who did not.

Dr. Janet Mort 

"The most important things of all for students is for them to believe that they can read."

Vulnerable readers need: 

Explicit literacy instruction in kindergarten and before, interventions immediately to close the experiential gap 

Dr. Richard Allington

Much evidence indicates that some teachers literally teach every child to read while others are less successful.

It's not the school that's effective, it's the teachers. Some teachers can get all their students to meet grade level. Some can't. Effective Teachers are the most powerful reading intervention strategy.

Minutes spent on literate conversations with other students is 3x's more powerful than minutes spent on reading comprehension programs. 

Core and Title programs should not look different. Often times we put our most vulnerable students in an incoherent intervention program. 

The average 3rd grader only reads 12-18 minutes a day.

The kids who spend the most time actually reading in school are the kids who 

become readers.

**there was a lot more and if you'd like a copy of my notes, they're HERE They're messy, you've been warned. 

Productive struggle and the exponential growth of human knowledge

According to Toffler (2002), it took approximately fifty thousand years to accumulate the knowledge of mankind that existed in the year 1 AD. It then took 1500 years to double that knowledge. But by the early 70's, we (mankind) were doubling our knowledge every 6 years. Scientists have determined that in our current day, human knowledge doubles EVERY YEAR. (Collier and Thomas, 2014)

Teachers no longer have the luxury of being the only one doing the teaching. When the knowledge-growth rate was slower, the traditional model of students seated in rows and a teacher delivering the exact same level of knowledge the exact same way to all students was adequate. Today, teachers must become facilitators of student directed classrooms, "preparing students to become information processors, analysts, and self-motivated learners." (Collier and Thomas, 2014).

Do you want to know what my most favorite parent complaint is? "He is so frustrated in class! He says his teacher won't just tell him the answer!" 

"Perfect!" says I. 

"A great teacher doesn't teach as much as possible. A great teacher teachers as LITTLE as possible, while modeling the behaviors of how to figure something out." (Maats & O'brien, 2015).

As parents, this is a huge shift for some of us and the way we learned. And we figured that because we learned that way, and we turned out fine and we understand it and are comfortable with it, our children should learn the same way.

But our instruction and learning environment needs to evolve and adapt to the amount and needs of human knowledge. This means we need to focus less on specific content (all of our favorite dinosaur or circus-themes lessons) and more on teaching students how to learn, how to reflect, how to productively struggle.

New year. What else is new?

http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/5901

                        If you want to do something new, you must let go of something old. 

I've never been big on doing New Year's resolutions. A few years ago I made a resolution to see how much weight I could gain. After a month it became clear that I was AWESOME at this goal and my wife helped redirect my efforts towards other slightly less life-threatening endeavors.

For us to get better and expand our abilities, we are required to let go of that which is holding us back. Sometimes we are able to recognize it for ourselves. Sometimes it takes another's perspective to help us see what is not working.

Being "good" means doing what you were told. 

Being "better" means doing what's right, for the right reasons. 

Being "the best" requires you to change and never go back to the old way.