A Physics Teacher's Formula for Increasing Student Learning

A Post on Student Achievement Best Practices
By Buffy Sexton

A few of my TLN colleagues and I were recently discussing the X PRIZE Foundation and that its next challenge—and prize—will be focused on education. As we brainstormed ideas for challenges and prizes, I couldn’t help but wonder how an external prize can be created when, in reality, our students’ education is the prize. Better yet, growth in their learning is the prize. And even better than that, our students’ ability to increase their own learning is the prize. Now there’s a challenge.

What could that kind of challenge look like? Let me turn up my imagination for a bit. . . .

Okay, physics teacher stepping in here. Let’s say that knowledge gained can only travel in the positive direction (that whole “never forget how to ride a bike” thingy), just like distance traveled. We need a unit of measure, so let’s use grade level, or gl. I will assign knowledge the variable k. Let’s also say that we will use the Greek letter ∆ (delta) to represent the amount of change in k. We can then use this formula for the amount of change in k: ∆k(gl)=kfgl-kigl, where f stands for final and i stands for initial.

Alright, looking good. But we need to know how much time passed for this ∆k. We’ll use ∆t, which just happens to stand for change in time. And, let’s use a school year, or y, as the unit of measure.

Let’s review:

Symbol	Meaning
k	knowledge
∆k	Change in knowledge
gl	The unit of measure for ∆k. (a grade level)
∆t	The time interval used to reach that ∆k. Measured in school years.

We are rollin’ now! So the challenge: at minimum, we want to get students to a ∆k of 1gl/1y. Ah, but we know it has to be student-driven ∆k. So, how do we get them to want to increase their ∆k?

Research has shown (that would just be my nine years of teaching) that while some, if not most, students do want to increase ∆k, not all students seem to care enough to try/stay on task/come to school on a regular basis/____________________. You can fill in the blank with the issue of your choice.

So what are concerned, exhausted, at-their-wits'-end educators to do?

Here are my humble thoughts:

• Embrace the Common Core standards (or, for my state, the Kentucky Core Academic Standards). They let us know what students should know and be able to do at the end of a given grade level. Will the first year of implementation be messy? Yes. Easy? No. There are a million if’s, and’s or but’s out there surrounding the Common Core. Transfer that resistive energy to kinetic energy. For science, the Common Core outlines what good science teachers already do.

• Stop fighting the things that already keep our students on task (albeit tasks they want to do). By this I mean their technology. Smart phones. iPads. Tablets. iPods. Xbox. Wii. We have been so busy trying to make sure students aren’t texting during class that we’re losing the chance to use the same equipment to keep them on task.

• Here’s the scariest one—yes, worse than cell phones in the room! Give, put, place, or throw the responsibility for learning on the student. Yes, I said it. Don’t stand and deliver. Watch and facilitate. Get on the sidelines and coach. Get out of the game and let them play to learn.

Give students appropriate tools, guidelines, and scaffolds. Turn up your imagination for a minute. What could this look like in your classroom? Picture, if you will—Twilight Zone, just go with it—a normal classroom on a normal day like any other. Only the desks aren’t desks. They are round tables. The students aren’t sitting, taking notes from a teacher standing in the front of the room. Some students are taking notes from a real text book. Some are taking notes on iPads. Some are conducting a lab. Some are filming said lab. Some are conducting online simulations of the lab.

Look, there’s a kiddo watching the video of the lesson he missed yesterday. Watch him. Stop. Rewind. Play. Stop. Rewind. Play. Stop. Write. See here? Here’s the teacher. Cruising around the room. Stopping to encourage her. To push him. To question her. To answer his question with a question. Each student has her own learning target. And each student is giving individual evidence of ∆k. How much of an increase in ∆k will students push themselves toward?

This isn’t the Twilight Zone. It’s the new educational landscape: student-driven learning. Will this be messy at first? Probably. Easy? Could be. Let’s see what kind of challenge the students design.

Buffy Sexton teaches science at Meyzeek Middle School in Jefferson County, Kentucky. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a member of CTQ’s Implementing Common Core Standards team.

Job-Embedded Professional Development Critical for Successful Implementation of the Common Core

People can be encouraged to change, but if the structure of the system in which the individuals work does not support them or allow enough flexibility, improvement efforts will fail.”  Todnem & Warner (1994)

A guest post by Bobby Moore,  Senior Director of Effective Practices at Battelle for Kids

Recently, I co-presented to a group of about 100 administrators during an Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators’ “Hot Topics” workshop.  The hot topic was “Transitioning to the Common Core,” but the theme of our presentation was job-embedded professional development. Ohio has evolved through proficiency tests, achievement tests, and now is transitioning to the Common Core. Historically with every new set of standards and accountability measures our students, teachers, schools, and districts have struggled. Then, after a few years, many would adapt and eventually become efficient and proficient. With today’s tumultuous environment in education, we cannot afford to adjust “after” the standards become implemented. We must be ready immediately to perform tasks and answer questions at proficient levels when the new Common Core Standards take effect in 2014. Teachers and schools will only be truly prepared through job-embedded professional development. 

As a former principal, superintendent, and now in my role at Battelle for Kids, where I lead a school-improvement collaborative of 122 Ohio districts, I have found that the key to this work is not about multiple initiatives; it’s about taking a focused approach. From my personal experience and research, the three strategies with the highest impact in accelerating student progress and achievement are:

1.    Building capacity around formative instructional practices system wide;

2.    Adopting a systematic approach to struggling (and advanced) students; and

3.    Embedding purposeful collaboration or job-embedded professional development.

Job-embedded professional development is much more than hosting one-day workshops, conferences, or inviting guest speakers to meet with your staff. This should be the time in which the adults in the building come together for purposeful learning and collaboration to improve student growth. I believe there is enough talent and expertise in every school in America that can be shared and developed. We do not have to fire our way to Finland or hire only graduates who are cum laude to create excellent schools. As a new principal and a new superintendent, our district focused on these three key strategies and as a result, we created schools that produced the top 4 percent of value-added results in the state and received the highest state ranking by committing to the three previously mentioned initiates with the teachers already employed in the district.

How do teachers become better at applying effective formative instructional practices? Through job-embedded professional development.

When do teachers share information about struggling students? This is also achieved through job-embedded professional development. 

School leaders must create structures and build in time and procedures for teachers to come together during the school day to learn and grow. School leaders should also participate as active team members sharing and growing. During this time, teachers can share best practices, develop learning targets, create common assessments, participate in online learning opportunities, and support each other in their work. 

Job-embedded professional development is a critical way to not only help teachers and school leaders prepare for the Common Core, but also to create a culture of learning, collaboration, and improvement in our schools, and most importantly, prepare our students for success in college, in their careers, and in life.

Bobby Moore is the Senior Director of Effective Practices at Battelle for Kids, a not-for-profit organization that works with states and school districts and across the country to improve educator effectiveness and accelerate student growth. He can be reached at bmoore@BattelleforKids.org.

How Online Professional Development Helps Students Surpass Expectations

In a slight departure from this month's theme on job-embedded professional development for teachers, I'd like to discuss the enormous potential that students are demonstrating.

I'm writing an article for Scholastic Administrator wherein I discuss the effect that online professional development is having on student achievement. Far from being a self-serving article, the article is meant to inform educators of what is truly happening throughout the nation when educators use online PD. Here are some independently confirmed stats from research done on PD 360--but know that the statistics you are about to see are not, in fact, what is important about this research. More to come on that, but first, the stats:

422 Title I Schools Compared to Their Districts

In 2011, independent researcher Steven Shaha, DBA, PhD, shows that students at 422 Title I schools with PD 360 significantly outperformed their districts from one year to the next. Students in Title I schools improved reading scores by 4.8%, whereas their peers throughout the district only improved by 0.1%. Math scores tell a more dramatic story, with Title I school students improving by 7.3% and district students declining by -5.9%, creating a performance gap of 13.2%.

Online Professional Development Results in Hawaii Compared to Districts

Also in 2011, 294 Hawaiian schools with PD 360 outpaced the rest of their state by more than 30% on standardized tests. PD 360 certainly cannot be called the direct cause of these improvements, but continued research over an extended period of time suggests a strong correlation between PD 360--and, by extension, online PD in general--and significant student perform. As an example of that continued research, in 2009, research shows that 187 schools outperformed district benchmarks by as much as 28.8%.

 The most significant findings in this research are not--and allow me to re-emphasize that the most significant findings are not--the results that correlate to PD 360. What is most significant about this research is just how much potential is clearly within our students. It just needs to be brought out when teachers have more support and training that answers their needs.

Our students receive better training when their teachers have an established learning method themselves. After aggregating this research, I came to the realization that we as teachers are professional students--we have mastered the learning process, and it is up to us to transmit that process to our students. Because our goal is not to fill their minds with names, dates, facts, and rules--our goal is to help our students to learn how to learn. When students can seize that process for themselves and understand how to ask the right questions, then they become not only independent, but filled with an insatiable desire to learn.

We are teachers, in part, because we have that passion for learning. So as professional students, we have questions, but we also need answers and coaches of our own. That's why online PD is so essential--the differentiation is unparalleled, the cost-efficiency is unmatched, and above all, the statistics show how much our students stand to gain when we train ourselves. 

I'm not trying to encourage you to use PD 360, per se. Every district has unique needs, and perhaps PD 360 is not the product that meets the majority of your needs (though frankly, I rather doubt that). But seek out personalized, differentiated training. Your students stand to gain an immeasurable amount of good when we as professional students have instruction of our own.

How has your professional development plan been working out? What do you like--or hate--about your current PD plan, and how could it improve? We have a lot to learn from each other. Sound off in the comments!

Job-Embedded PD: To Sleep, or Not to Sleep...

Deia Sanders is a particularly dedicated master teacher and instructional coach. She supports teachers and students at a rural, Title I school in Mississippi with over 90% of students living below the poverty line. 

Mrs. Sanders shares one experience that demonstrates a simple yet dramatic way that job-embedded professional development for teachers can be applied to the classroom.  

She is a mother of two girls--Nyla, 3, and Piper, 18 months.

So many times we bring in speakers and trainers, and travel far and wide to hear and receive the best professional development for our needs. Then we return from the trip, head back to our classrooms with the best intentions of implementation, but in the end we can’t find time to fit in something new, bury the materials under papers,  or fail to fully implement the full realm of training we just received… either way, we aren’t getting our money’s (and time) worth.

Mendenhall Jr. High choir receives Superior rating.

It Has to Apply to the Teacher First

The key to fully implementing professional development trainings is follow-up. And so many times this is nearly impossible simply due to the time and money invested in the initial round of training. And we know time and money are not things educators have a lot of.  Because of this, there has been a move for more schools to implement instructional coaches—a person whose goal is to train and then implement and coach side by side with a teacher on an on-going basis the strategies and best practices.  This has been an exciting and wonderful shift in our PD for both me and my staff. 

Drool Spill Clean-Up, Aisle 3...

But what job-embedded professional development for teachers look like? It changes every day and with every teacher, but here is what it looked like one day:

Earlier in the year I was working with a new teacher. We had decided to video her class and review her teaching because the students were telling her they were “bored to death.”  As I sat and watched the class, it almost appeared as if there was a carbon monoxide leak. The students’ heads were dropping one by one on their desks quickly followed by closed eyes and then the rumble of snores. The teacher asked me a question, and without even thinking I changed from coach to teacher-mode and began moving around the room and discussing the topic with the students. All of their little heads popped up and they began to discuss, share, and get excited about the lesson. As soon as I sat down and the teacher went back to lecturing and once again her audience hit the proverbial snooze.

When the teacher reviewed her lesson she was filled with excitement.  Although she was disappointed in her presentation, she was enthusiastic to see the shift in her students’ motivation when the class turned from lecture to discussion, and the simple change from standing at the front to “working the room.” We were able to pinpoint simple techniques that we could focus on to add engagement to her classroom.

PD Isn't Just About Teachers

We didn’t have to spend money or remove her from her students for a training that may or may not meet her needs. We were able to set personalized goals to meet her where she was both physically and professionally and move her step by step to the next level of performance. 

Not only is it huge for our teachers, but it’s an enormous benefit to our students as well, because we no longer have to remove their teachers to train them.  Because job-embedded PD is ongoing and catered to the individual needs of the teachers, we are seeing teachers move to more effective classrooms faster than before.  Our students are now getting lessons worth waking up for!  In an age of differentiated instruction, it’s almost amusing that it took so long to actually do that with professional development and our educators.