It's About Problems

By Dr. Vin Hawkins
Educational Consultant, Former District Leader

Isaac Asimov once stated, “It is change, continuing change, inevitable change that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be…” He continues to imply that everyone must assume a science-fiction way of thinking.

Recently, Jon Stewart invited Michio Kaku, City College of New York professor of theoretical physics, and author of Physics of the Future, to The Daily Show. Dr. Kaku’s interesting discussion about asteroids nearly colliding with earth (recently, a large one) and hitting it (in Russia, a small one) set the stage for informing us that a large asteroid could (theoretically) hit the earth in 2036, after making a rather close pass to our atmosphere in 2029—a viable solution to prevent such a cataclysmic event? Physics indicates that a force of substantial magnitude, like a rocket or hydrogen bomb set off on or near the asteroid, could be used to alter its trajectory out of earth’s path. Now that’s an example of tackling one huge problem by some very smart people.

The electronic revolution has spawned instant access to all the content knowledge and underlying minutia one desires. Solutions to 21st century problems, albeit more earthly than the one cited above, are just as compelling. Previous generations debated what knowledge is of most worth (Spencer), and what content is of most worth (Elliot). Students today (and we are all students), must address what problems are of most worth. Problem recognition and solution must assume a prioritized position in our educational enterprise:

By the year 2025 the number of countries that will experience water scarcity will increase by nearly 100%. That translates to about 10% of the earth’s population. Problems: Governance, etc.

It is projected that by the year 2043, the minority will be the majority in the United States (50.1% non-white). Problems: Geographic shifts, etc.

By the year 2030, 60% of the world’s population will be urbanized. Problems: Public transportation, etc.

By the year 2040, 50% of the world’s countries will be using renewable energy. Problems: Economic, etc.

Problems such as these, categorized as utilitarian, humanity, and/or global community, are indicative of the engine that needs to drive instruction. Problems that are skill-embedded, interdisciplinary, real (not contrived), collected from respected sources, as well as personal curiosity and motivation are best addressed by students who are astute in problem-solving skills such as critical and creative thinking, debate, time management, ethics, rapid-change adaptation, inquiry, dilemmas and decision-making, and are comfortable in integrating historically diverse subjects (content convergence).

At a recent TED talk, (Sir) Ken Robinson stated that a longitudinal assessment of divergent thinking showed a rather stark decrease in student ability in this area between kindergarten and high school. No surprise, given the traditional, industrialized factory model of compartmentalizing both student and subject that contribute to the moribund state of far too many classrooms and schools. Students need to be emancipated from the inertia that restricts their entrepreneurial spirit while balancing characteristics that define an educated person.

Are Teachers Prepared? A New Test Could Be the Way to Find Out

For many occupations, there is at least one overarching test that gives aspiring professionals the credentials to work in their respective fields. No matter the level of education received, if a lawyer doesn’t pass the bar exam, he cannot practice law.

In December, CNN published an article that discussed a report advocating an entry exam for all teacher candidates, like the bar exam taken by aspiring lawyers, issued by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

The AFT report, titled “Raising the Bar: Aligning and Elevating Teacher Preparation and the Teaching Profession,” included a statement by AFT president Randi Weingarten:

“We must do away with a common rite of passage, whereby newly minted teachers are tossed the keys to their classrooms, expected to figure things out, and left to see if they (and their students) sink or swim. Such a haphazard approach to the complex and crucial enterprise of educating children is wholly inadequate. It’s unfair to both students and teachers, who want and need to be well prepared to teach from their first day on the job. At a time when we are raising the standards for students through the Common Core State Standards, we must do the same for teachers.”

The report recommends that the exam be multidimensional and include subject knowledge as well as pedagogical knowledge. In other words, in addition to having to know the subject they teach, teachers would have to demonstrate that they had the qualities to be “caring, competent and confident.”

The test, which would be required of all future teachers nationwide, would be given to candidates regardless of whether they enter the profession through traditional means or “an alternative route.”

What do you think? If an exam like this were to exist, would it make a major impact on the preparedness of teachers in classrooms?

Math Anxiety Linked to Physical Pain?

From November 2 to November 8, three stories in Time Magazine, The Atlantic, and even Wired Magazine have discussed recent findings that math anxiety can activate pain areas in our brain.

But that is changing for students in several schools I’d like to highlight. First up is the new Education Achievement Authority (EAA) district in Detroit, Michigan.

The EAA has turned the tables on teaching, with the letters “SCL” (standing for “student-centered learning”) ringing out of the mouths of principals and students across each of the fifteen schools. I just flew back from a visit to the EAA where School Improvement Network caught on camera the trials, difficulties and successes of this new education model.

Where math is concerned, I saw a class of 12-year-old kids listen carefully to their teacher when she turned down the radio for a few moments of brief instruction about changing centers. The kids quickly and quietly changed their activities and got straight to work. They weren’t mindless automatons; they were engaged. They wanted to switch and learn math skills in several different ways. When the kids switched, the radio went back on, and the children kept learning.

This teacher (soon to be highlighted in an upcoming PD 360 video) had excellent classroom management, to be sure. But that’s not her secret to a great classroom atmosphere in an area that has had chronically terrible behavior for decades. Her secret is that she and the EAA are providing students with methods to teach themselves, with significant support from a teacher, and thereby eliminate the anxiety over math or school in general.

The second example is from South Jordan, Utah.

Kalina Potts is a teacher who is teaching multistep word problems in her math class (you can watch the video for free here). Potts is teaching her lesson by using Common Core Math Standards 4.OA.3 and MP.1, 3, & 4.

“I think the hardest part is just figuring out what you’re supposed to do,” says Stephen, a student in Potts’s class. “The math problems itself like division, multiplication, and everything like that isn’t so hard. It’s just figuring out which one you’re supposed to do with which numbers and everything like that.”

In other words, Stephen and his classmates aren’t just following steps—they are learning how to learn. So rather than becoming anxious about whether or not they done the problem “right,” the students are learning for themselves how to solve a problem and why they choose to solve it that way.

It is my estimation that the fear we experience when confront with math problems is that we are faced with real-world issues and no homework instructions for how to accomplish them. But in both the EAA and in Ms. Potts’s class, students aren’t just learning how to follow directions; they are learning how to own their own experience with math.

What are some of your favorite methods for teaching math? How are math tasks going on your classrooms? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

To Believe in Education Again

Last week, the Huffington Post published a blog post titled, “Wealth of Intelligence Can Lead to the Wealth of a Nation.” At first glance, the article appeared to be the average post about the need to help more of our students pursue interests and careers in math and science to compete with other countries in those subjects.

However, instead of talking about STEM and how to raise student test scores, the author, Ronnie Cameron, called on the everyday people in students’ lives to create a cultural change that would shift the emphasis from what policies need to be in place to community influence on the education of our children.

Specifically, he made his point clear with the following statement:

“We need to refocus our attention on school and its importance. We have to create a culture where education is of utmost significance and that it is the key to economic freedom and success in this country. Respect and collaboration with our nation's educators is necessary. They are the vehicles to our country's future because of their influence on our young ones. But we can't leave it all up to them; a thirst for knowledge and curiosity has to be created in the home and community.”

While the government and other interest groups are doing their best to support students in the classroom, these cannot be a substitute for the influence of parent, peer, and mentor support in the after-school hours.

“The idea that all children and young adults can’t succeed is asinine. If there is a culture in place that expects success by everyone and that is constantly reverberated by media and public figures, it will make it ‘popular’ to do well.”

Cameron’s plight is noble, but how do we make changes in culture to make a lasting impact for our children?

Teacher Assessment and Evaluation: The Mentoring Aspect

Can any teacher be categorized in only
five, simplistic ratings?

As we talk about mentoring students and creating equitable learning environments, how does a teacher assessment and evaluation affect a teacher’s ability to respond to minorities?

Glad you asked. Because when a teacher assessment and evaluation is done the right way—I repeat, when it is done the right way—it is an opportunity for teachers to spot areas to improve. Of course that’s not how evaluations are being handled; right now, they are scary tests that depend on someone else’s performance.

Sad experience has taught us how not to perform evaluations. So now let’s look at how teacher assessment and evaluation can actually make a better experience for everyone involved.

In South Carolina, Graig Meyer is director of the Blue Ribbon Mentor-Advocate group. He has several Equity and Innovation videos on PD 360 that show how he and his team are there for minority students, giving them a chance at life after high school. And the program is phenomenally successful—100% of students who graduate through the BRMA program go on to post-secondary studies.

If a student makes one grade below a B, the student gets tutoring. Now imagine that your principal or coach comes to you with a few areas noted in your observation/evaluation and said, “I can see that you have what it takes, and you just need some training in these areas. So here’s what we’re going to do….” Unheard of, isn’t it? And yet the ramifications would be immense! If this same model helps 100% of students become college and career ready, then it would certainly have a similar effect on teachers.

If we use teacher assessments and evaluations to actually train our teachers instead of just to scare the wits out of them, then teachers will ask to be observed. They’ll ask for another evaluation. They’ll have the tools they need to do what they love to do best: help students learn.

We suffer under the delusion of treating our teachers like worker bees and expect them to turn around and treat their students with individualized attention. Teacher evaluations and assessments are meant to be classrooms rather than courtrooms. When our teachers become more effective, we will be able to see 100% of students become college and career ready.

Educators Get More with Online Professional Development

Professional development or professional learning has made and continues to make all the difference in the preparedness of educators in schools. Even natural talent needs to be guided when it comes to instructing several classes of 15 to 32 (or more!) of America’s students every day.

Before the 21st century, computers were used for basic functions such as playing (rather simple) video games and typing your notes from handwriting on paper to be printed off on a page with holes on the side that you tore off.

Today, with the Internet, we have all the resources we need right at the edge of our fingers. Doesn’t it make sense to also have our professional learning online where we have everything else and where we spend a great deal of our time?

For some educators, professional development used to be such a chore, something they would dread. Online professional development has provided a way for teachers to get the information and the instruction they deserve when they want it, and more importantly, when they need it.

With the shift from traditional professional development to online professional development, there are three major improvements that will help educators as they continue to learn and do all they can for their students:

1. Greater Quality for Lower Cost: Traditional professional development—the site-and-get session from a presenter paid to come to your school—would take time away from teaching and would cost the school money in substitutes for teachers. Online professional development eliminates the need for subs or time away from your students, but quality doesn’t change, at least not with PD 360. Where else can you get 120 experts on-call at no extra charge?
2. It’s There When You Need It: Say you’re having a hard time with classroom management, or struggling with how to start your own PLC, no matter where you are, at school or at home, you can find the solution to your problem right away. It could be in a video segment or by talking to one of the 900,000 educators within the online PD 360 Community, but no matter how you find the answer, the resources are there for you when you need them.
3. It Only Gets Better From Here: Because online professional development is indeed online, it is easy to update and add more content as the needs of 21st century students and teachers grow. As standards change along with the very dynamics of the classroom, professional learning will have to adapt to give educators and students the resources they need. Online professional development allows for new resources in a matter or weeks to months instead of waiting for the next version of a book to be released or the next lecture from an education professional.

Online professional development wasn’t created just to be another things online; it was developed to give educators quality resources where they are and when they need them.

Common Core and Teacher Evaluations: The Beginning of the End?

The Common Core Standards are finally sinking into the depths of education, for better or for worse. Upon the heels of another wave of controversial standards comes legislation passed throughout the US that went largely unnoticed in the brouhaha surrounding the Common Core but has now burst into the spotlight in full operatic tenor with the Chicago Teacher Union strikes.

Here are some of the opinions swirling around:

1. Educators already know how to handle education—and everyone else can leave the same way they came in, please.

It’s a strong argument. You certainly don’t see as much legislation around how doctors perform their work (though there are certainly plenty of laws, rules, and regulations to account for); at least, there have yet to be surgeon strikes on how their surgeries are evaluated.

Now the Common Core Standards dictate what students need to be able to do. It is a departure from simply what they should be able to know (read: regurgitate) to what skills students can demonstrate, the latter implying a change in how the information is maintained. Followed on the heels of the Common Core Standards are the new InTASC Standards, aligned to the Common Core. The InTASC Standards are for teachers what the Common Core is for students, with one great exception: if students fail to meet the Common Core Standards, teachers are worried that they will be fired, and if teachers fail to meet the InTASC Standards, teachers still worry that they will be fired.

So it’s hardly a wonder that educators want to take education back, so to speak. Everywhere we look, there are sticks to beat us into compliance with few carrots in sight.

2. Educators aren’t cutting it, so legislation has to step in.

At the risk of sounding biased, I’m going to say that this very opposite opinion is tenuous at best. The definitions of “success” and “cutting it” vary, and simply being better than the rest of the world is actually (in my opinion) a poor measure of performance. Being better than someone else has little to do with how well your personal best may be; by the same argument, the only thing we need to do to improve our current “success” rate is wait for Finland to dumb down their curriculum. Of course that won’t happen, but the target should be greater than simply beating out the next guy.

Besides, I know of a few senators and representatives that I would love to evaluate and list as “subpar.” So why should their largely uninformed (and potentially well funded) opinions on education hold sway on my job?

Here’s the good news: legislators may not be on our side, but the Common Core Standards are—or can be.

The media (liberal and conservative alike) has done a curious job with the Common Core Standards, first by adoring our president and then by smearing the Common Core Standards as government overreach and pointing the finger at Mr. Obama. But the Common Core Standards offer us another shot at our classroom. We need to help students create skills—however we choose to do that. There are recommendations to aid our lesson planning, but these are standards, not curricula.

Evaluations, many based on the Common Core Standards, are also prominently displayed as a means to thin the ranks, so to speak. But when evaluations are done correctly, we use them as classrooms to help teachers learn rather than courtrooms where teachers must stand trial. The funny thing about an evaluation is that we are too often looking for faults. And we always find what we’re looking for.

If the Common Core Standards and teacher evaluations are handled the right way, then this could be the beginning of the end: the end of low teacher support, the end of untrained educators, the end of poor education. And it could be the start of something much, much greater for every teacher in America.