Checklist Manifesto

I just finished the audiobook of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande.  Atul is a surgeon who worked with WHO to develop a method to reduce surgical complications and death. His solution, borrowed from the aviation industry is a checklist. He tells his story through numerous in depth anecdotes. It is very readable (or listenable). He despairs that people will not jump on the highly effective wagon of checklists but will spend millions or even billions on the latest and greatest technology, even if it only slightly increases effectiveness.

The correlations to teaching may not be readily apparent, but they exist. He describes effective checklists as those that are short, only hitting key factors that make a difference rather than those that have a plan for every eventuality. Here is one place where I see the field of education having gone seriously awry. When Race to the Top monies became available they came with the string of more stringent teacher evaluations. Many schools, districts and states embraced Danielson's Framework for Teaching as the tool they would use for annual reviews of teacher success. It includes 76 elements from four major clusters. The Danielson Group sees the framework as  "the foundation for professional conversations among practitioners as they seek to enhance their skill in the complex task of teaching." It is evidence based in that the various elements have all been shown to improve academic results of students. As a whole, however, the complete package lacks research to demonstrate that teachers that adhere to the rubric will be better. It does provide useful definitions for researchers to use when examining the topic. That being said, she resists the idea that a checklist be completed during an observation to evaluate teachers.

Independent of the appropriateness of turning her framework into a checklist, is the concept of having a 76 element checklist at all- especially one that requires not just a yes-no response but a nuanced evaluation of how well it is being completed. Checklist experts will argue that a checklist needs to be short in order to be effective. Even when we create rubrics to evaluate student writing tasks they stay on one page perhaps listing as many as a five by six grid of elements and levels of success. When the rubric is pages long, it is bound to be ineffective. Atul explored longer checklists and found them to hinder rather than support the end goal- for him reduced surgical complications and death. If we want to create a checklist that will support our goal of improved teaching, it needs to be succinct; only including the most essential elements, not every detail that can (and ultimately should be) considered.

Similarly, if we look at applying a checklist to teaching a direct instruction lesson, we need to limit its scope and hone in on the details that are essential to success, and perhaps those that when missing are most likely to cause a lack of learning. Perhaps that might look something like:

• stated learning target
• assess prior knowledge
• model the learning 
• allow students to practice
• close with an assessment of the learning target.

Do we need to do more than those few things? Of course. If we do not do one of those things are we likely to limit student acquisition of skills? Yes. These five things we can quickly check and frame our work around. We can use them in lessons using different structures and with material of different levels of complexity. Could a model like this be used for teacher evaluation? Sure, if it were accompanied by an in depth dialogue to discuss the elements. 

Checklist are highly effective at improving success, but they need to be carefully developed, tested and refined. No one's research based proposal will be satisfactory the first time around. We need to see about how to take a good framework and transform it into a useable tool.

Personalized Reading

My district, like many around me are on a personalized reading kick. In theory, I agree that personalizing education makes sense and today's technology provides many platforms through which to manage this concept. When I grew up in the 70s there was an idea of contract learning that some of my teachers embraced. My fifth grade teacher had the entire language arts curriculum broken down into segments (for example, there-their-they're words or capitalize proper nouns). Each segment or contract had at least two learning activities (i.e. worksheets) and one quiz. Each student was to complete the learning activities, turn them in, complete a quiz and move on- with a reteach worksheet. If they needed to redo something, it was returned with either "redo" or "see me" emblazoned across the top. The teacher ran mini-lessons with individual students who needed them at his desk. Over the course of the year we were supposed to complete a minimum of at least 125 contracts. I raced through the activities and completed the most extra contract, not because I was particularly gifted, but because I was highly competitive. Many papers were returned for me to redo. This system is made easier with technology because you can have video lessons on each section, automatic grading, and games. I know why my teacher used this system- he had put the energy into creating it and he was not going to redo it. Front loaded planning and individualized pacing. Our current incantation of personalized learning captures this idea but takes it step beyond the crate of manila folders of my childhood.

Personalized Learning- Digital Strategies and Tools to Support All Learners by Michele Haiken with L. Robert Furman explores modern platforms to implement personalized learning. Instead of merely adjusting the pace, modern personalized learning talks about changing the content and product as well. Through the book the authors discuss different types of readers and activities to differentiate the classroom activity to meet their individual needs. They rely on the concept of self-direction as a method to motivate students and keep them on task. I am sure that this idea works for many. Choice is a powerful motivator. One of my problems, however, is that I know that not all students care about reading, even when empowered to read what they want, at a level that is accessible to them.

One of the tools that they recommend are a variety of choice boards. This tool has been around for a long time. I remember reading about them in the 90s. Oddly they never caught on. One reason for that, I believe, is that however hard it is to develop challenging and interesting assignments, it is harder to develop multiple ones that explore the same standards. One example that I found on the web about characterization is found here. It has five types of showing what you know/graphic organizers on which students are asked to answer questions about characterization and then they are asked to Frame It!

1. Source – Where did you get this information?(Green) 
2. So What! - What do you now understand about these characters and why is it important?   (Red)
3. POV – is this the author’s POV, the character’s , yours, or all. (Blue) .

This only slightly personalizes the activity. Clearly the whole class is reading the same book. The ultimate goal is a characterization paragraph. The students get to select their graphic organizer alone. The authors envision a much more diverse set of activities going on in a classroom. Teachers would need to have much more time to explore activities and develop tasks.

The authors do present a large number of websites that can be used. One that appealed to me is view now do now. This site's activities presents pictures for students to view carefully and then write a response about. It gets critically looking at images and writing and is good for reluctant and struggling readers and students learning English.

The format of the text is very readable. Each chapter starts with an overview of a type of reader and then moves into digital tools that can be leveraged to meet their needs. They include examples of activities developed for a classroom. The end of each chapter is an "As you go forward" section and a summary of the tools discussed in the chapter. Perhaps a bit Pollyannish in concept- get students to leverage their own learning- but perhaps an admirable goal.