High Impact Instruction

 Jim Knight is a prolific writer and educational coach. His articles in ASCD's EL magazine are always a good read. His style is highly readable and follows his own advice- love it when people walk the talk. His book High Impact Instruction: A Framework For Great Teaching, met my expectations for good advice with a practical spin. Jim is very aware that making changes to teaching is a process and he advises picking an area of focus and working on that. He also, unsurprisingly is a big fan of using an instructional coach. These team members are becoming more common in our schools and offer a great opportunity to teachers to help improve their practice. 

One of Jim's baseline ideas is using recordings of teaching to really look at your practice. This is not about posting to social media, spotting and reporting on student behavior or sharing with the class, it is about being reflective. If your district allows it, always check before you record something, it is a great tool to critically look at your practice and identify opportunities for improvement.

His book includes video of teachers doing what he suggests and reflecting on the practice. In this day and age, a useful component to any text.

His first advice is around planning. He recommends that when planning a teacher develop guiding questions, formative assessments and learning maps. You can pick your starting point with these items. His book is complete with a planning map for each chapter. There are many types of mapping that have been developed. His planning maps pull from these, outlining what are the knowledge, skills and big ideas that you wish to teach in the unit. He suggests when teaching the material that students have access to these maps and help develop them themselves. Making students write, helps put things into their brains. Identifying how you will assess each part of the learning and what you will do with students who don't get it is essential. He tells about one teacher who realized about 1/6 of the class did not understand the learning. The next day she review the writing expectation by having student identify strong points of high quality answers. By showing this model of high quality work and reviewing the material, a small amount of time was spent helping students improve their skills.

In order to obtain teacher engagement, Jim presents a number of ideas, one of which is cooperative learning. Like many, I have seen many cooperative learning flops. He suggests starting with simple cooperative learning activities like think-pair-share and turn and talk. I never really considered them as cooperative learning, but since they involve peer work, they qualify. He highly recommends Sue Vernon's book: The Score Skills: Social Skills for Cooperative Groups. These skills include share ideas, compliment others, offer help/encouragement, recommend changes nicely, and exercise self-control. By identifying critical social skills of group work and explicitly teaching them at every grade level, we increase the likelihood that the groups will function productively.

One idea that I really liked was what he called Lasorda's Law, named after famed baseball coach, Tommy Lasorda. This involves giving enough freedom to empower students while providing enough control to ensure that the work gets done and learning the objectives is met, a difficult balancing act for some. 

It is a great read with some solid advice to improve teaching. Definitely worth tracking down.

Executive Function Toolkit- Backpack organization

 

Understood.org identifies executive function as the “set of mental skills that include working memory, flexible thinking and self-control.” Students with Executive Function issues often are most easily identified by struggles with their inability to organize their universe. This is particularly true of backpacks and lockers. If your child struggles with missing assignments, not being able to find materials they need or spending excessive time rummaging for things in their backpack, they have this challenge. If they deny they need to organize their materials, these three questions can highlight the contrary view. I have worked with students organizing their backpacks/folders/desks/etc. I use this strategy and my high schoolers typically are receptive to the work.

One of my favorite resources on executive function is Seth Perler. He is a coach that publishes a weekly vlog about a huge variety of executive function concerns. His work targets students, parents and teachers at various times.

His routine on cleaning the backpack is as follows:

1.       Explain what is going to happen.

2.       Give permission to remove anything personal that they do not want to share.

3.       Remove everything from backpack.

4.       Go through every single thing. Things go into the garbage, an archive location or a binder/folder to return to school. Talk about it. If things need to be submitted to a teacher, make a plan for doing so. (For a child with real trouble, an email to the teacher as a reminder to specifically ask the child for the work or even scan and submit the assignment for the child.)

The important thing is that this is a manageable chunk of work, when it is done with someone. Also, it needs to be done every week. Set aside a time that works for your family: afterschool on Friday, Monday after dinner, Saturday morning before fun things are done, whatever works for your family. How long it needs to be managed by an adult depends on the individual. Age, organizational skills, motivation, etc. can all play a role here.

Seth’s video about this activity is found here. I strongly recommend using him as a resource.

Executive function toolkit: Self-regulation

 

Researchers at Harvard say, ” Executive function and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully.” These skills are essential for learning and working. Although different researchers identify different numbers of these skills, they all circle around being able to get things done without irritating to death the people around you. This month’s focus:

Impulse Control

Impulse control helps people think before acting. Many strategies and activities for learning these skills can be found online and in books. 

People with impulse control weaknesses often make purchases they cannot afford, blurt out inappropriate things, and engage in risky behavior.

Some examples of ways to help develop executive function skills around impulse control include:

·         Provide students with a “Wait 5” strategy–counting to five before verbally responding to an input, and a “Wait 3” in personal conversations to think before speaking in pairs or groups. Expand as a way to help with waiting. People can count things in the environment while waiting (sneakers you can see, ceiling tiles, people carrying a bag, etc.)

·         The “Stop, Think, Do” mantra.
This technique is also useful in anger management techniques.
This strategy can also help us with impulse behavior:

• Stop before you act
• Think about the consequences
• Do if it is ok to go ahead.

·         “If… Then” Scripts
Kids may get in trouble when they act impulsively when faced with difficult choices.
Self-instructions in the form of “if…then” or “when…then” can help them navigate risky situations.
For example, if you feel your child may be easily influenced to make a bad choice, you may rehearse an “If…Then…” script:
“If a friend offers me a cigarette, then I can say “No, thanks, I’m not into that”

“If I finish my homework, then I can play a video game.”

·         Activities that can help develop impulse control include sports, music and meditation.

·         Teach about budgeting and purchasing with cash- no more cash means no more buying. Instead of buying everything tweens need, give them a total they can spend and let them make choices- then make them live with their choices. If they need to do laundry every third day, so be it.

·         Confirm with children that humans CANNOT multitask. Studying requires an environment without distractions like music, social media or siblings. Parents need to help reinforce this. Parents also need to model this. Require that phones be away during meal times- no one checks them during meals. Use parental controls on phones to block school class time, study/homework time, and sleeping time. Having guardrails around specific activities can help develop good habits at other times.

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

In a landscape changed by the recent Supreme Court decision cutting down affirmative action, looking at how race impacts our country is essential. The oft quoted Sandra Day O'Connor quote, “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in student body diversity] approved today.” highlights that affirmative action will no longer be necessary to increase student diversity. Unfortunately, collegiate diversity has shown itself to be stubborn to move. Further, when affirmative action has been removed, diversity declines. How are we to increase opportunities for groups who have been steadily and systematically subjugated? One proposal to work an end around the policy prohibition is to use zip code preferences. The next few years will be interesting as progressive institutions attempt to include higher percentages of marginalized groups.

Reading Emmanuel Acho's Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, made me more aware than ever about how the canvas of America is built upon pushing some groups down. This book does a great job of presenting challenging topics, explaining the history around the issue, and then asking the reader to walk the walk. This includes calls to complete further research which are highlighted in the text. The book covers topics that are uncomfortable in a real way. While he addresses real concerns and issues and is matter of fact, his tone is not one of you did this, but rather, you need to learn from and about this.

Years ago I was in a classroom where students were discussing the N-word in response to some racial situations that had occurred at school. One group of young white boys were adamant that it was not a problem for them to use the word. I wish I had the chapter where Acho discusses the word at that time. He clearly describes why it is not ever ok for white people to use the term. I think his approach might have at least made those boys think about their language differently. By the way, it is never ok for white people to use the N-word.

I really enjoyed the historical approach that Acho takes throughout the book. While I was aware of many of the the things he highlights, there were some ones I was unaware of and I am grateful that he researched the material so thoroughly to highlight his points. 

I am disappointed that the Justices did not look at the compositin of our universities and say we are not there yet, and we need to continue to work towards the goal. The decision sets us back in terms of trying to find equity for our community. I firmly believe, however, that with continued efforts, we can achieve a more equitable society where the content of our character is how we all are judged.