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.

Attack of the Teenage Brain- part 2

John Medina's text, Attack of the Teenage Brain!, is a delightful read whose quest is to better understand the neuroscience behind executive function (EF) and how to improve it and thus improve academic success. He uses humor and a rich composite of cultural references to explain and explore research and how it relates to teenagers. His well-researched book is highly readable. His target audience is teachers, but parents and perhaps some parts teenagers would benefit form this understanding.

Medina organizes his book around how to change education to develop EF in teenagers and thus improve their performance. His three pronged approach includes the following components of changing the learning environment:

• Create night school for parents within the existing school


• Engage certified faculty to design and implement a curriculum around positive, evidence based marital practice


• Work with schools of education to create parenting curriculum and insert it into teacher training


• enlist these newly trained staff to create and implement the curriculum- compensate them appropriately


• Partner with researches to evaluate the success of these curriculum


• Design schools centered around a gym


• implement a physical movement curriculum and encourage universal participation in organized sports


• change start times to be compatible with brain development


• Implement a mandatory SEL program that emphasizes empathy


• designate a mindfulness room painted green


• Use certified instructors to implement a mindfulness program that has been verified by research. 

p.200-201

Much of this advice centers around three components: teach parents, exercise children and produce research to refine programing. In my previous post I talked about the exercise piece.

EF is affectionately described as "the ability to get something done- and not punch someone in the nose while doing it" (p. 13). Medina organizes EF into three components: response inhibition, cognitive flexibility and working memory. It is easy to understand how these three elements underlie much school success. Students who display strong skills in these areas tend to be far more successful in both school and life than those who do not. They represent soft skills that are important to life after school that we often do a poor job teaching because they are not assessed, are difficult to assess objectively and take extensive time to develop in many students but develop very easily and readily in others (much like reading- can you imagine an EF remediation program as wide-reaching as the reading intervention programs we have today?).

Medina highlights three elements that are essential to understand when talking about learning. First, the brain is interested in survival not learning (p. 83). Second, "human learning is primarily a relational proposition" (p. 87). Human survival was based on working together to make us bigger and scarier and more successful than other apex predators. We need each other to survive. Third, the more fear in our lives, the more we focus on mere survival than on relationships. Safety enables learning. Knowing this information allows us to understand how the kids interact in school- demystifying some of the frustrating behaviors that teenagers exhibit.

Medina highlights the idea that parents are the most important element in a child and teenagers life. Thus he sees parental training as important. The most successful parenting style and teaching style is authoritative- places limits on behavior, explains the rationale for the limits, provides defined feedback about performance, imposes consequences for not meeting the expectations and gradually releases control as children grow and develop. This concept is seen repeatedly in the research and is why the author considers parenting classes so important.

Medina addresses the idea of screen time. Screens seem omnipresent in our current lives. Our phones, our 1:1 devices, TVs, video games, tablets, cars, some refrigerators and the list goes on. Is screen time good or bad. Kids spend an average of 9 hours in front of a screen a day (p. 169). Assessing and understanding the impact of this activity on children is important. Research is somewhat inconclusive. Screen time before bed decreases sleep- this is bad. We need to address the screens in the evening even though it is a hard ask. Screen time decrease understanding of non-verbal emotional cues (p. 171), but social media use increased ability of teens empathetic ability (p. 170). Heavy media multitaskers have poorer performance on filtering tasks than light media multitaskers (p. 185). This is one area where Medina does not discuss the challenge of causation- media multitasking decreases filtering and task switching skills or people who are poor at filtering and switching chose to be media multitaskers.

Medina discusses the benefits of mindfulness and how to develop it through mediation. He showcases how being mindful decreases anxiety and depression. Since as many as a quarter of teenage girls suffer with anxiety, most undiagnosed, identifying ways to address it seem prudent. Meditation is a way to help teens deal with the stress of their lives. While we might hear people say things like, "What's the big deal? When you get older you'll see how trivial that is," to the teen, it is a big deal. Their lives have not given them the big picture yet and they cannot take that perspective.

Understanding how teenage brains work can help us frame programs that can teach them more successfully. We need to reach these youngsters. We cannot keep doing the same thing since we need better results and ever before.

Attack of the Teenage Brain! part 1 exercise

John Medina's text, Attack of the Teenage Brain!, is a delightful read whose quest is to better understand the neuroscience behind executive function (EF) and how to improve it and thus improve academic success. He uses humor and a rich composite of cultural references to explain and explore research and how it relates to teenagers. I know there is lots to digest in this book so I am going to hone in on one area today- exercise.

Exercise has the potential to improve executive function, academic success and emotional health. John points out the research to support these assertions. It reminds me of similar research suggesting that an hour of aerobic exercise per day significantly reduces ADHD related problems. Exercise is also given credit for reducing stress, weight and depression.

First, lets look at strictly the impact of exercise on the body. It increases blood flow. The brain, while only 2-3% of body mass consumes 20% of ingested energy (p. 146). It needs blood to survive. When we increase blood flow, we increase alertness and ability to focus. (ADHD anyone?) Our teenage students who take chronic sleep deprivation to a level of near omnipresence, come to school sleepy. If we get them up and moving, we can sustain their attention better because their brains have enough oxygen to work. If we make them work harder- aerobic activity- that blood flow improvement lasts longer, builds vessels and capacity. Our brains work better with more activity. Students who participate in regular activity actually sleep better than those who do not exercise. Studies have shown that this increases academic achievement to the tune of a letter grade for every 15 minutes of daily activity (p. 137). If we want our kids to do better in school, lets make them work out to activate their brains and prepare them to learn. There will be a side effect of better behavior as students are more able to self-regulate their behavior, increase their focus and engage in the opportunities we present.

The research that John pointed out indicated that cognitively challenging exercise such as organized sports, or, I imagine, watching a new aerobic routine and trying to keep up, increases EF (p. 116). No cognitive challenge, however, was required to improve mood. Since suicide is a leading cause of death for teenagers (and a leading cause of impairment when it goes wrong) and most mental illnesses begin to establish themselves in early teenage years, providing a vehicle for reducing stress and depression seems like an important goal. (Stress does have a significant impact on the brain's ability to learn.) Again our evidence based practice involves activity. Be sure that our middle schoolers still have recess where they can go outside and play. Have PE class available more often. My daughter's school moved from one 80 minute block of PE every 4 days to 2-50 minute blocks every 4 days. The research certainly supports this move to improve academic performance and mental health of our kids. Tight budgets should not keep kids from accessing PE. Our era of intense focus on test performance should not pull PE so that kids can have more time for ELA and math. These things are improved by PE, even if time is taken away from those core areas. A difficult proposition to swallow, but the research supports it.

John's prescription for increasing EF, academic achievement and mental health is exercise. Regular, aerobic and cognitively challenging movements for on a daily basis. While genetics are instrumental is a students' inclination toward EF disorders like ADHD, changing the environmental situation a child is in will improve their situation. It may not take away the problems, but it will offer an avenue for improvement- one that does not involve medication or changing the home living environment. Lets try to change what is in our control to improve student success. Instead of cake, let the mantra be let them eat exercise.

Better than carrots or sticks

Managing classrooms is a challenge. Some schools are identified as needing support when they suspend too many kids or too many in a subgroup. I spent the last year working in one such program where they were trying to implement Positive Behavior and intervention supports (PBIS). They were not fully engaged and did not seem to be making much progress. When I read Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey's book,

I thought about many of the challenges of the school. I appreciated that they were trying to implement an evidence based program of management, but they were still struggling. This book talked about some nuisances that would, potentially lead to greater success.

Both Restorative Practices and PBIS share the idea that kids engage in behavior because it is what they know. They need to learn alternative patterns of behavior to help them become more successful. Restorative Practices is focused on making things right. I have previously thought of it as a post-behavior intervention, and this book showed me how it can be applied prior to escalation of behavior.  I had also reasoned that putting a victim and a perpetrator together in a room might be cruel. I have seen kids who have been brutalized and cannot imagine making them face their abuser. If the victim is willing and prepared, I can see how this approach could facilitate healing. Unfortunately, such meetings require lots of pre-conference work with the parties, a willingness to participate, and highly skilled facilitators. The average teacher is not prepared to do this role.

I appreciated the idea that students need to develop empathy through guidance and learn skills. The authors identified four questions that students could reflect on to develop these skills:

1. Did you ask for help today when you needed it? 
2. Did you offer help to another when you recognized that he or she needed it?
3. Did you accept help when it was offered to you?
4. If you declined help, did you do so politely?              p. 44

Soft skills are often seen as critical and often lacking in young people today. Helping skills are one such group of skills that students need to work.

They highlight the importance of class meetings. These are not merely activities after a problem, they are proactive, community-building actions that help to circumvent problems. They are opportunities to share ideas, thoughts, joys and sorrows. They are opportunities to remind students about upcoming events and appropriate. They are opportunities to review before a test or debrief study skills afterwards. When they are used throughout the year for these varied purposes, students are not adverse to participating and do not see the class meeting as "someone(s) did something wrong."

Throughout the text there are images of students holding signs like, "I wouldn't make it anywhere else," (p. 16) and "I own my mistakes" (p. 97). These are inspiring comments that showcase trust and personal responsibility. They also have many sentence starters for discussions which would be useful for difficult conversations. Overall a book I know I will read again. Learning about how to correct the course before it is woefully off target is an admirable activity that I know I would improve from.

peer tutoring and the Gifted

When our district started its full day kindergarten program I went to the public sessions. My daughter was not going to eligible for the program for another year yet, but would ultimately attend kindergarten so I was interested. I asked about how they were going to keep my daughter learning all day- I was resigned to her being bored and developing her coloring skills for half a day, but an entire day seemed too much. I was informed of the options the teachers could use for advanced students:

• More challenging work could be sent home- my five year old did not need her learning after school but in school. If I wanted to be her teacher, I am perfectly capable of homeschooling if that is the goal.
• She could help the other students when she finished, after all the best way to learn something is to teach it- who trained her in teaching? Didn’t she deserve to learn new things, too?
• There would be plenty of learning for her to do. Kindergarten is far more advanced than it used to be- true, but she had mastered even these raised standards before kindergarten started.

There was no mention of sending high achieving students to higher level classes or differentiating to individualize her instruction. For a decent school district, their answers seemed woefully lacking.

Catherine Little addresses the concern about peer tutoring or having fast finishers help slow-goers in her article, “PeerTutoring and Gifted Learners- Applying a Critical Thinking Lens.”  She poses three questions for peer tutoring:

• What is the intended purpose of peer tutoring- not just for the tutee, but for the tutor?
• How will you assess progress toward that goal?
• How do we guide students to achieve them?

As Ms. Little and my district superintendent pointed out there is an adage that teaching others is the best way to learn something well. Unfortunately, this is an unproven adage. Helping out others after you finished or being the recipient of “ask 3 then me” all class will slow down progress so the child is not sitting with nothing to do. There might be empathy goals to achieve. If one of these three purposes is the goal then how do you assess it? My daughter would get increasing frustrated with being asked to help others to pass or being constantly interrupted in her work by others. While she shows tremendous empathy for her brother whose ASD presents huge struggles in the social realm, she wanted her school time to be about, well, her. Never was there any measure of her success in any of these areas. Admittedly how would you measure it? She showed kindness during the interaction- she did before, that's why her teachers were so eager to suggest it. She refrained from empathy lacking comments- she did, in school, but when she came home, I would hear about it.

I know the success of Peer Tutoring as an instructional tool. The problem, as Ms. Little points out, is that successful peer tutoring programs involve training of the tutor and clear expectations for both parts of the dyad. Further, they work best with participants who choose to be involved- not those mandated to participate.

If we want to have our schools meet our children’s potential- a goal for many schools and teachers- we need to figure out how to deal with these fast finishers. Merely asking them to help out cannot be the sole answer. Perhaps give them more challenging assignments- not more work, different work. Perhaps have them work on an independent project of interest when they finish.  Perhaps they could read. If they want to help out, let them, but don't demand it of them.

Best Practice

As I was teaching this spring Steven Zemelman, Harvey Daniels, and Arthur Hyde's book, Best Practice: Bring Standards to Life in America's Classrooms, Fourth Edition, was given to me. Its been a crazy busy first part of summer, so I only just now finished it. It was published in 2012, shortly after the release of the Common Core Standards and reflects that time- disillusionment with No Child Left Behind and excitement about the advent of the Common Core. Six years later  we have seen progress continues to stagnate under new standards and people left scratching their heads about how to help American children be more successful in school.

Best Practice urges the use of evidence proven strategies and discipline based consensus about how to achieve success. The general message is that kids need to read and write more and engage in more inquiry and experiential opportunities to better grasp the curriculum. This book had much more of a focus on elementary and middle school programs. Only two examples address high school experiences. This is potentially due to the lack of these ideas being utilized effectively at the secondary level in spite people saying they are the goal.

Best practice begins with the basic principles:

• student centered classrooms
• authentic learning opportunities featuring experiences that allow them to construct ideas and systems
• holistic rather than part to whole
• challenging curriculum
• learning comes from cognitive experiences- based on prior knowledge, emphasizes the role of factual knowledge and conceptual frameworks, full of self-monitoring
• developmentally appropriate and self-reflection
• socially based- friendly and supportive, safe, collaborative, democratic
• multiple forms of expression to engage in ideas

Then they go on to explain the seven structures of teaching that support the principles-

• gradual release of responsibility
• classroom workshop
• strategic thinking
• collaborative activities
• integrative units
• representing to learn
• formative-reflective assessment.

I can find little argument with the ideas except that they are often out of step with how we approach much of our educational program- discrete subjects with a mountain of curriculum to wade through, little collaborative planning time and respect for teachers who want to preserve their silos. As the authors go through the chapters on reading, writing, math, science and social studies, these challenges become apparent. We might be able to appreciate the beauty of the examples provided, but find it nearly impossible to figure out how to implement it in our realities. The best advice, although not written in the text is to go slow and incorporate pieces that work for you and then move forward as you become more comfortable.

The authors support conferencing with students around reading and writing. Many of my peers pondered how to implement this when they had not read the book or student's paper. (After all, my son glories in stories of his peers who wrote about imaginary books or who watched movies in lieu of reading and wrote reports based on the film.) They offer these three questions:

1. What are you working on?
2. How is it going?
3. What do you plan to do next? or How can I help you right now? P. 49

These are springboard questions that stimulate a conversation that should only take about five minutes per child.

I also really enjoyed the description the authors used of an "emphasis on metacognition, taking responsibility for running your own brain" (p. 50). It gives the focus to kids. This past year I worked out a behavior self-monitoring sheet for the kids I had in one class. They had to give themselves a daily rating of how they did- accomplished the task for the day and behaved appropriately. There was a description of what it looked like to behave appropriately to help them gauge their day. I looked over their ratings every day and sometimes added comments about how the student rated himself. Behavior improved in the room. Students were more able to identify what they needed to do and how to do better.

From a reading point of view, they stated the four things children need to do in order to improve their reading:

• read a lot
• access to books they can read
• to learn to read fluently
• and to develop thoughtful literacy (p. 266).

I notice an absence of rigor, grade-level appropriate, or challenging when describing what kids should be reading. This movement of the Common Core is not what they suggest makes for better readers- reading motivating, accessible material does. The message applies to writing- write a lot about things they care about so they can do it easily (both from a graphomotor and text perspective) and be thoughtful about their writing. These are things we can do in every classroom- no need for long papers- a paragraph will do, if it is done everyday in every class.

We can help our children achieve new heights- but we need to look at things differently and we need to engage them in meaningful work.