Distance Learning Worksbook

 Kharen Minasian and Debra Kidder's short text, the Distance Learning Workbook: Hands on Approach to Virtual Teaching, is an accessible and easy to read. It's 34 chapters are mostly two pages each. They are to the point and full of first person experiences. It starts with how to approach day one and goes on from there. Importantly, the authors would suggest that any day could be day one of virtual instruction. While consistency is important, improvement is worth the change.

The authors are proposing work for fully remote classes, not concurrent ones. Since my district and many around me are running concurrent models, I read it through that lens. They suggest that students not spend all day in front of the computer, a factor many synchronous programs are requiring. In my district where we are allowed to let students go for independent work after the midpoint of the class, students generally remain tuned in for support with independent assignments. Some of the ideas would work if everyone, regardless of whether they were in a brick and mortar or virtual setting were sitting in front of their device and working. Some of them are just impractical for concurrent programming and need adjusting.

The first thing that the authors assert is that SEL and relationship building take prominence, especially in the beginning of the year. This could become a question of the day- What is your favorite pizza topping?- a Jamboard four corners what you think about x, or write three words that describe how you are feeling in the chat box. The authors assert the importance of saying every child's name every day before lunch, or every period. I have used a roster to make sure I address everyone, but popsicle sticks, random name selectors and moving through the list of names of participants can all be effective for getting to everyone.

The authors argue that virtual instruction truly should be student centered, focused around peer to teacher relationships and real world connections to content. Activities like breakout room discussions, choice boards and virtual fieldtrips allow for students to work collaboratively with choice. Feedback, they argue, should be specific, especially in a space where so much nonverbal contact is absent. Writing feedback should be focused on how to improve- everyone can and should.

I really liked the questions they pose for students to provide feedback to teachers.

• Can you easily find what you need in the digital classroom?
• Have you had any technical issues and do you know how to report them?
• Are my lessons, assignments, and due dates clear to you?
• Do you feel comfortable asking questions?
• Do you feel like you're being heard in this class?
• How would you improve the distance learning experience? (p. 64)

I would like to make the questions a little more open ended, like what makes it easy to ask or what makes it hard to ask questions? While these sorts of questions should not be a daily ask, regularly checking in with student perceptions helps to make the experience more valuable to the students.

Distance Learning Playbook

 Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher are two of my favorite educational authors. They prolifically write easy to read material that has a sound research base filled with practical examples and experiences from teachers in the field. They joined forces with John Hattie, Visible Learning's meta-analysis guru, to write The Distance Learning Playbook Grades K-12: Teaching for Engagement & Impact in any Setting. The first premise is that we are in unprecedented times- virtual and hybrid learning, not for a brief period like in our more traditional crises like a hurricane, but for extended periods of time. Research about how best to provide instruction in these times is not well researched, so we must draw from what we know about sound research.

This book contains 9 modules focused on self-care, the first day, relationship building, teacher credibility, teacher clarity, engaging tasks, planning instruction, feedback and assessment and learning. Each of these modules includes many video segments accessible through QR codes or the publisher's site. The book is also full of places for notetaking, thinking about personal practice and planning. These resources are also available at the publisher's site. By driving people to closely examine personal practice and plan for integrating elements described, they model some best practices for learning from reading.

 Effect size is a statistical measure of impact of an intervention. .4 is the effect size of a typical teacher over a typical year. Higher numbers represent increased learning and lower numbers, decreased learning. When it comes to digital technology, the overall effect size is .14- not very promising. That being said, there are activities that do increase achievement: interactive video at .54, intelligent tutoring systems at .51 and writing at .42. The most disastrous thing- the presence of cell phones at -.34  (7% of the book, the digital book uses this reference and only notes include page numbers p. 5).

One early thing the authors suggest is to establish norms like you would in any face to face teaching experience. Examples might include:

• Be open to spend the time it takes to learn.
• Embrace that learning is food for the mind.
• Understand that learning is a process that requires  patience with yourself and others. (17%; p. 27)

I especially like the middle one. All too often we are asked why are we learning this and the worst response is because I said so or it is on the test. I have previously used it is exercise in thinking and problem solving and we all need to do this every day.  This addresses the boredom factor ( -.47 effect size) by helping make things relevant (53%; p. 98). No, it is not adequate for relevancy, but it is a starting point. The authors note that "Students who have low levels of self-regulation need help finding relevance" (53%; p. 98). So many of the students I work with have disabilities that negatively impact their self-regulation. ADHD, ASD, FASD and many other diagnoses abound in our learning environment. These students need extra help seeing how the learning at hand is important to them.

I found their steps for think alongs (alouds) broke the process down well. 

• Name the strategy, skill or task (this provides your focus and all comments should center on this idea, even if there are other compelling or interesting ideas in the activity or passage.)
• State the purpose of the strategy, skill or task (Why are you doing it)
• Explain when it is used.
• Use analogies to link prior knowledge to new learnings (this is how we put things into our brain- linking to what we already know)
• Demonstrate how it is completed.
• Alert learning to errors to avoid (common mistakes and pitfalls).
• Assess the use of the strategy, skill or task. (68%; p. 127)

Think alongs can and should be interactive. It does not have to be all the teacher's script. Questions to students can help guide or inform the process. While a first person approach is used, other input helps to engage the students.

Frey and Fisher teach in a school that uses competency based grading- the report card lists two grades per class. One is solely the result of summative assessments. Students who score lower than a 70 must engage in a learning task and then retake the assessment. If report card time rolls around and the scores are not above a 70, an incomplete is given. Summer school is a process of resolving incompletes and consequently does not have a set timeline- just a set objective. The second score students receive is about the other things frequently included in the grade- organization, effort, and participation. This sort of approach emphasizes learning rather than compliance. The authors argue that using a competency based grading system makes especial sense with remote instruction because students are compelled to achieve not merely go through the process. It encourages personalization where  well understood, high leverage standards are the focus of instruction, students get extra instruction when their formative  assessments demonstrate they need it, and feedback helps students to know where they need to grow.

Lots of attention is given to feedback. A personal pet peeve of mine is generic, unuseful feedback. "Good job" does not tell me anything. "You did a great job showing the steps to solve the problem" or "Your identification of Lennie as slow is correct. Now you need to add an explanation of how your quote demonstrates it." Give great guidance as to what to do in the future. The authors highlight the ability to use vocal feedback through digital platforms as especially helpful. It can help build on connections (use the student's name), provide inflection cues and support weak readers to understand your input.

The authors wrap up with a statement about teaching in a time of crisis. Students can actually learn more in these times when teachers target what the students know (an do not) what students know as opposed to teaching what the curriculum says or what teachers think students need (88%; p. 169). When we really focus our instruction through small groups, individually assigned tasks  and highly directed feedback we grow our students. When I have done home instruction I have found that a days worth of school can be completed in 2 hours of instruction. We have come to see this idea played out on the large stage as teachers are given short minilessons and students are left to complete assignments independently  in a fraction of the typical school day or class. Crisis is an opportunity to grow. Lets do it.

Co-Teaching, Do's, Don'ts and Do Betters

Toby J. Karten and Wendy W. Murawski's book, Co-Teaching, Do's, Don'ts and Do Betters, offers many suggestions for improving co-teaching. This book with it's large font, and low density is an easy read. They suggest looking at co-teaching as an activity with many components or spokes that need to be addressed to optimize effectiveness.  Understanding by Design, differentiated instruction, positive behavior interventions and supports, universal design for learning, multitiered systems of support, co-teaching models, social emotional learning, and  specially designed instruction are, however, more than the spokes of co-teaching, they are the spokes to good teaching and schooling. Placing this at the feet of of co-teachers simplifies the roles of other teachers and magnifies the role of co-teachers.

From a co-teaching model standpoint, they highlight the traditional models: one-teach, one support; team teaching, station teaching, alternative teaching, and parallel teaching. They strongly encourage the use of all these approaches over time. Sticking to one approach is not as effective. They discuss the prominence of one-teach, one support because of it's reliance on traditional roles, but note how it emphasizes only one adult is the teacher here. It is the method that requires the least co-planning, a commodity that is often in short supply in schools. Even when co-planning time is available, it is often used as "let me tell you what is going on" time.

A key component of co-teaching is co-planning. They offer suggestions for in person and virtual approaches. Ultimately, it may require more of the partners than a traditional teacher needs to put in. 

Of great interest to me was their comment, "Don't minimize the impact of class size and the degree of heterogeneity" (p 161). They cite meta-research by Mathis (2016) that proposes small class size is an important indicator of improved results. Upon deeper review, the research is heavily focused on early grades (K-3) and demonstrates positive impact through graduation. The last grade where reduced class sizes were examined was 8th. They defined small class sizes as less than 15 and large ones as 22-28. Interestingly, many places today have class sizes well over 30.  While small class sizes have real economic impact to children well beyond their grade, because the the impact is well beyond their grade it is an upward battle to require them even in the early grades.

Similarly they suggest keeping percentages of identified students to under 30% (p. 161). When I first started teaching, I worked with a high school business teacher who commented that she had a class that was 90% students with disabilities and she had no consultant teacher support. This phenomenon has changed somewhat in some places, but certainly not all. In New York we try to keep the balance at 50%. What that means is classes become large to accommodate the students with disabilities. Further they load these classes with struggling students who have 504 plans or just are struggling. By having such a high percentage of high needs students, you detract from the ability of the teachers to meet the needs of all. Of additional note, mixing 50% students with labels with 30% high ability students, you create a class that is highly difficult to teach. UFT (teacher's union) suggests the percentage be capped at 40% with a class size cap of 25 but no more that 10 students with disabilities in the space. NYS posits a limit of 12 students with disabilities in an integrated co-taught class with a recommendation that there be more than or an equal number of students without disabilities in the class. Gifted advocates would argue for clusters to be formed and groupings of high and middle or middle and low students to increase teachability of classes.

The text is full of charts and sample forms that could be used or modified for use. They include many vignettes, mostly from K-8 experiences. I think things get trickier at the secondary level with many special ed teachers co-teaching with many teachers. The dance gets more complicated as you have to learn the styles and approaches of multiple general ed teachers. I know that Murawski would suggest working with a maximum of two teachers, but that is simply not in the cards in many places.

It's not about grit

For years we have been inundated by the idea of grit. Angela Duckworth's idea of grit has been percolating trough schools and businesses. Her 2013 TED talk has over 22 million views. There is an online grit test. Grit is the skill of perseverance in the face of challenge. Gritty people are more successful.

In this era of social unrest over social injustice, many books have been published about what makes people of color more "disadvantaged" than others. What is at the root of the generational lower performance in school? Some have suggested that these children, do not have grit; that their dropout rate proves it. Well, I believe that the drop out rate proves little. Some studies have suggested that up to 30% of drop outs are gifted- they do not lack the ability to persevere in the face of academic challenge.

Steven Goodman's book, It's Not About Grit: Trauma, Inequity, and the Power of Transformative Teaching, highlights the challenges that many poor students of color have that interfere with their ability to be successful in school. Goodman is the executive director of New York's Educational Video Center. For decades he has taught courses in documentary film making to students in New York City who are old for their grade and statistically unlikely to graduate. Every semester they produce a documentary about a social issue the students are interested in. Themes have emerged over the years- health and housing, police and justice, immigration, gender and identity, and foster care are the ones that are featured in this book. His intermingling of students' quotes with facts about what his students experience presents often disturbing insights. He strongly challenges the notion that his students are unsuccessful in school because they lack grit. He proposes that they are gritty about survival and school does not play a role in their day to day getting through.

The book is accompanied by video clips that showcase students sharing their lives. Public housing that contributes to severe health concerns, poverty that leads to parents working long hours often at odds with school schedules, fear of ICE taking them or their families, police brutality that saps their sense of safety, harassment due to gender identity issues or sexism, and a broken foster care system all play a role in undermine the ability of these students to be successful because they are overwhelmed with a lack of safety and security. These children endure countless challenges that we struggle to grasp. It causes chronically elevated cortisol levels which interfere with cognitive development and thinking. They do, however, persevere in often unimaginable circumstances. They do poorly in school or drop out, not because they cannot engage in perseverance in the face of challenge, but because they choose different challenges to fight through- often those related to survival.

The bleak picture is flanked by a message of hope. Students who endure multiple traumas become more likely to succeed when they encounter two things: an adult touchstone who believes in them, encourages them and helps them find solutions to the multitude of challenges they face, and a sense of agency. Goodman hopes that his course teaches students to examine issues and learn about ways to seek solutions. This agency, the idea that something can be done about their situation, can lead them to escape a cycle of poverty that engulfs so many.

Goodman believes that if we understand the traumas that our students experience, we can better engage them. Not with more of what we traditionally do, but with something different. Education focused on transforming lives through improving our circumstances. Taking stances, fighting for justice, working to reduce inequity. The Civil Rights movement had a huge cadre of kids; college students engaged in civil disobedience and acts of assembly as a way to work toward change. We can encourage students to tackle the injustices of their lives and work to improve society. When our schools empower them to engage in social justice, we also empower them to learn more about everything.

A book that shows a window into the lives of children who experience repeated trauma and yet have the resilience to go on. They work tirelessly at the things they perceive necessary to survival. Understanding from teachers is essential if we are to connect and build with these students. 

Blended Learning in Action

 I joined a book study group at school about Caitlin R. Tucker, Tiffany Wycoff and Jason T. Green's book, Blended Learning in Action: A Practical Guide toward Sustainable Change. In me form, I read the book in its entity over break. The book was published in 2017 and it seems somewhat prescient when it says, "In just a few years, all the buzz about 'blended' learning will fade, and it will simply be learning" (p 192). With the pandemic we have been thrust into blended learning without the careful planning and ramp up that the book recommends. It has been a year of being thrown into the deep end to see if we can swim. Some are doing well and some are barely keeping their heads above water and some are drowning. Trying to implement some of the ideas from the book in this situation is far from ideal.

First the book has no target audience. This is a serious fault. Sometimes it is talking to administrators, others to teacher. While the advice to pick and choose which chapters to dive in to is given, rarely have I found it so glaringly how the book was written. Some sections are for one group over another, but they are not well delineated, so picking the most appropriate ones would be a challenge.

Second, the book refers to models that it does not include. If you are going to reference them and in your book study questions ask how you would implement their advice you have to include the models and their descriptions. Beg, borrow or rewrite the models so that you can explain what you mean to your readers.

The third major weakness of the book is the figures. Some are in font sizes far too small to read. I know I am old, but so is a large percentage of the teaching population. If it needs to go to two pages so that it is accessible, make it so. Other figures are not juxtapositioned appropriately. Too much space between the reference and the figure. We should not have to look far for a figure. 

The book does have some great nuggets. One of my favorites is, "Though information is more readily available to students today through technology, access to information is fundamentally different than learning" (p. 191). We sometimes get caught in the wheel of we presented it therefore it is their fault if they don't get it cycle. This is more of a concern today with the access to information students have. We need to be really make sure we are checking for understanding.

The authors suggest that several aspects of blended learning are important considerations: offers opportunities for personalization (time, place, pace, and path) and agency, authentic audiences, connectivity with people around the world, and creativity. While they do not say blended learning is a personalized instruction method, they imply it throughout the book, but then they comment on the essential provision of keeping students roughly together. 

For administration they offer suggestions for slowly adopting, testing and onboarding teachers to a blended learning path. This foundation building was thrown out the window in the face of the pandemic. We are moving forward in a crazy drunken stumble trying to make blended instruction work for our kids. Some schools are offering lots of support to teachers to help them adapt, others are not so much. 

For teachers there are some descriptions of different models of blended instruction. Unfortunately most is offered at a high level rather than including sample lesson plans, ideal platforms and apps. I know that technology is changing at a rate that we cannot hope to keep up with, but the lack of specifics will hamper some people's adoption of the ideas. Caitlin's chapter on the whole group rotation is the best in the book for practical, use-now ideas. 

Each chapter ends with book study questions that include examine the benefits and challenges of the topic and how do you address the potential challenges. They ask the reader to think about what they need to do to address the topic in the chapter, what support they might need and how they can get it. In this way they are really asking the reader to examine their personal situation and think about how to include blended learning in their space. 

It will be interesting to see how other book study members view this book and where we jump from here.

Beyond Co-Teaching Basics

Wendy W. Murawski and Wendy W. Lochner's book, Beyond Co-Teaching Basics, presents a method for evaluating and improving co-teaching skills. Their extensive compilations of rubrics reminds me of Danielson's teacher evaluation- too extensive to use in its entirety, but presented in such a way so as to make people think they must try. They do suggest focusing on key areas in need of improvement. Their list of skills is extensive. 

They open the book up with a review of co-teaching formats. These were identified by Marilyn Friend. What they add are teacher actions of co-teaching. This chart presents 17 suggestions for parallel work by teachers including lecturing- modeling note taking and facilitation a silent activity- circulation and checking for understanding (p 17). Perhaps this is the page the individual starting out as a co-teacher would find most useful.

I find challenge in the idea that in a level 3 program (top level of their rating system), you cannot differentiate between the general and special education teacher or students. If you cannot differentiate between the two, you are probably not leveraging individuals skills to the maximum. I want to know the difference between the subject matter expert (general education teacher) and the learning style and strategy expert (special education). Yes, they will teacher each other things, but assuming both teachers take responsibility for the learning of all the students, there is not a problem with the divide. Assuming there is no identifiable difference between the students, means someone is blind. ADHD students will be identifiable by their character traits (ex. extra movement, distractibility, and impulsiveness)  and perhaps the management strategies used to help them (ex. fidgets, different chairs, extra proximity). Students with sensory impairments may need extra large print, speech to text and FM systems that are not available to all students. Identifying differences is not, in and of itself, a problem. Holding different standards for the same results, treating students substandardly because of a disability is a problem.

They passionately argue for co-planning as a prerequisite of co-teaching. While they suggest that ideally a teacher only co-teaches with one person or at max two, they acknowledge that in many programs a single co-teacher works with a whole group of  general ed teachers. They do not suggest anything to help teachers in these programs other than to advocate for smaller ratios of special ed: general ed teachers. Since this is not fiscally possible in many places, there is a limited amount that a team can do. It means the general education teacher plans and the special education teacher modifies, often on the spot. Increased time working together may help ameliorate this problem, but time cannot be the only solution.

The book offers some great suggestions on how to improve skills, but since the focus is at the system level, the individual teacher may be left trying to do it alone with little support. The authors suggest starting small and demonstrating improvements in order to obtain buy in from others. 

Trying differently rather than harder

A parent was introducing her child's FASD to us and recommended Diane Malbin's book, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: Trying Differently Rather Than Harder. Being the reader that I am, I went to Amazon and obtained my very own copy and read. The book has a couple of basic premises. One, any amount of alcohol during pregnancy runs the risk of FASD and the more that is drunk, the higher the risk. Two, FASD is the result of brain damage and should be treated like other more visible disabilities. We don't tell the blind person to try harder to read, we give him Braille or audiobooks. Similarly we should not expect individuals with FASD to be able to do tasks they cannot do. Three, we need to modify the environment to meet their needs. Interestingly, I find these last two principles similar to those we recommend with autism spectrum disorder.

The author identifies some primary behavioral characteristics. If these characteristics are not met appropriately, they result in secondary behaviors as the individual deals with the frustration of not having their needs met and being presented with unrealistic expectations. These primary characteristics include:

• dysmaturity
• slow processing speed
• impulsivity and distractibility
• memory problems
• difficulty generalizing
• difficulty abstracting and predicting
• over and under sensitivity
• limited ability to identify cause and effect.

Secondary behaviors include anxiety, fatigue, rigidity, shutting down, poor self-concept, social isolation, aggression, avoidance and depression. Unaddressed, these behaviors may result in trouble with authorities, self-injury, and addiction problems.

As a result of these children's lack of cause and effect understanding, poor generalization skills and memory issues, behavior modification techniques often are unsuccessful. Consequently, modifying the environment becomes the humanizing choice. Specific instructions and verbal and visual cues may become essential. Becoming extra aware of links between physical states (such as hunger or tiredness) and behavior is important. I remember realizing my son did not recognize hunger, but when he was hungry he was impossible. That meant I needed to get him to eat so that he could control his behavior. This sort of link is common in children with FASD as well.

We need to understand that when they learn something, it may not generalize. I knew how to use the graphic organizer for that assignment but need explicit instruction on how to use it on the next. What they were able to produce one day, may not be reproducible another, especially if the setting is different (school v. home; ELA room v. social studies room). Too much input is overwhelming. All those anchor charts around the room may help many students,  but distract and result in brain freeze for the child with FASD. The average kindergartener learns three step directions, but for a child with FASD that may not be possible until middle school and beyond.

The best businesses thrive because of managers. The best managers identify the strengths and talents of their teams and find ways for people to spend their time doing the things they do best. We need to emulate this behavior in schools and homes. We need to find the things our children do best and work to ensure that those things are the things they have time to do. This allows them to find flow and success. When a person spends the majority of their time doing things that are super hard and stressful, they cannot be their best. When they capitalize on those things they do well, they can excel. Creating this sort of environment is essential to our children with FASD's success