Category: Best Practices

Teaching practices that work, or partially work and are under development.

Affective Teaching & The Mustache

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That's not a dead mouse.

Sometimes, the silliest things become big and define moments for students in ways we can’t possibly anticipate. Take, for instance, my mustache. After a month of rallying my colleagues to grow beards in order to raise money for prostate cancer research – and we raised roughly $700 in internet and cash donations – we had a beard auction for the student body, in which they could choose a teacher, make a bid, and determine how that teacher would shave for the last day of September. We had spirals, mutton chops, handlebars, a particularly epic swirl, and the letters X-C for the cross-country coach. I got the sweet, sweet mustache.

I approached the mustache with humor, shaved most of my hair to accentuate the Sargent Slaughter-esque nature of my visage, and went into the day with a new-found energy. Kids laughed. Kids tried not to laugh, and I fixed them with a steely gaze until they laughed. We had fun.At one point, I relieved a teacher who was giving a test for a few moments of bathroom reprieve, and I said “My mustache is watching you punks,” as they huddled over graphing calculators. A girl replied, “We’re watching your mustache.”

At the end of the day, as I prepared to leave for home, I ran down to the PE office for my clippers and saw the cross country team returning from practice. They actually crowded around, chatting and joking about the stache. I told them to drink it in, as it was the mustache’s last moments on Earth. A few kids went “awww.” I trimmed, shaved in the bike commuting locker room, and returned my clippers to the coach for the aforementioned X-C shaving. When the kids saw me, a roar of disappointment rose from them. They actually mourned the mustache. It was really amazing. And hilarious. What their collective groan at my shaving told me was that they appreciated the break from routine, the connection with their teachers in a silly way, and the leveling effect of a goofy act on the part of the teacher.

I am not an affective teacher, preferring to stick to the business at hand, having fun, but maintaining a certain distance that allows for a mutually respectful relationship with kids. This month of shared silliness has not necessarily brought students closer to me, but it has brought me closer to them, which may help me bridge gaps that would have existed or been perceived by certain kids. I think I’m a little more human today in their eyes, and I think that’s a mutual victory. I guess I’ve learned something that this guy knew all along, and I’m better for it.

Project Based Learning – How Structured?

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When it comes to reflecting on my own examples of Project Based Learning activities that I have designed in the past, little of it seems to be doing “new things in new ways.” I have viewed PBL as a means to achieve old ends in new-ish ways, meeting standard and benchmarks in a more student centered way that is sometimes constructivist, but often prescribed. PBL is so often just an extended, active version of the mindreading demanded by teachers; guess what I want you to know becomes guess what I want you to know how to do. Of course, I have some good PBL units that allow for discovery, but these are messy units, with loose time frames and challenging appearances for anyone beyond the classroom, like administrators.

If we take for granted that “Social and recreational online activities are jumping-off points for experimenting with digital media creation and self-expression,” then a way to do something new in a new way is to allow for students to control and design outcomes based on their interests and fashioned in ways that can be social while meeting learning targets (35). Fears about transgression online seem unfounded and often remind me of Puritanical fantasies about how sweet we were as kids. I haven’t thought that most kids are behaving any worse online than they are in analog, and this seems supported by the “Living and Learning with New Media: Report of the Digital Youth Project”:

In our work, contrary to fears that social norms are eroding online, we did not find many youth who were engaging in behaviors that were riskier than what they did in offline contexts…We do not believe that educators and parents need to bear down on kids with complicated rules and restrictions and heavy-handed norms about how they should engage online, particularly if they are not attuned to the norms that do exist among youth. Simple prohibitions, technical barriers, or time limits on use are blunt instruments; youth perceive them as raw and ill-informed exercises of power. (37)

A way to change PBL to become more real, more authentic, more student-centered, more constructivist, more “new,” is to let go entirely. This would be very hard, very messy, and entail authentic risks – kids might not learn at a quantifiable rate, and they may learn only that which they want to learn or need to learn from their own perspective. I think this is probably what they do anyway in the teacher-centered model until their spirit is broken and they become compliant. Will Richardson wrote yesterday about designing schools for kids, not adults. He wrote “We’ve been taught to hate ambiguity, that only one answer exists, that if we have enough money, we can game the test. We’ve been taught that learning ends once the test is mastered, that our passions don’t matter, and that numbers rather than goods tell our educational story.  Yet, this is what we perpetuate because for the adults, it’s the easiest path.” Instead, adults could get out of the way and allow for peer-based learning contexts:

Peer-based learning is characterized by a context of reciprocity, where participants feel they can both produce and evaluate knowledge and culture…More expert participants provide models and leadership but do not have authority over fellow participants. When these peer negotiations occur in a context of public scrutiny, youth are motivated to develop their identities and reputations through these peer-based networks, exchanging comments and links and jockeying for visibility. These efforts at gaining recognition are directed at a network of respected peers rather than formal evaluations of teachers or tests. In contrast to what they experience under the guidance of parents and teachers, with peer-based learning we see youth taking on more “grown-up” roles and ownership of their own self-presentation, learning, and evaluation of others (39).

This would lead to a stepping back for teachers, allowing others, including the students themselves, to become the experts. For most teachers, this would be a nightmare. But, even when I think about the writings of Ruby Payne on poverty that I read in my first Master’s program, I imagine that a structure like this would work in high poverty schools often labeled “failing” under our current system, schools that can be admittedly grim places for kids and adults alike. If students were engaged in real peer networks that included adults fluent in the skills and discourse of the area of interest, they would learn languages and modes of operation within different cultural contexts that would expand their abilities to work successfully beyond their immediate cultural context. These networks operate in the following manner for teachers:

Unlike instructors in formal educational settings, however, these adults are passionate hobbyists and creators, and youth see them as experienced peers, not as people who have authority over them. These adults exert tremendous influence in setting communal norms and what educators might call “learning goals,” though they do not have direct authority over newcomers. The most successful examples we have seen of youth media programs are those based on kids’ own passionate interests and allowing plenty of unstructured time for kids to tinker and explore without being dominated by direct instruction. Unlike classroom teachers, these lab teachers and youth-program leaders are not authority figures responsible for assessing kids’ competence, but are rather what Dilan Mahendran has called “co-conspirators,” much like the adult participants in online interest-driven groups (39).

Co-geeking out is what this “co-conspirator” might mean, and if the teacher isn’t the appropriate geek, then the role of the teacher is to allow the student to find the right geek or help guide him or her to a knowledgeable geek. As the report asks in conclusion, “what would it mean to think of public education as a responsibility of a more distributed network of people and institutions” (39)? All educational contexts could function in a more decentralized manner and, while this would mean a giant leap of faith for a conservative body of people – the conservators of culture mentioned in “Shaping Tech for the Classroom” – but would be a move into a new culture that is happening anyway, one shaped by the youth who live in this culture already to differing degrees.

In designing PBL, I wonder about ways to build an ecosystem in which kids can interact online, socially, within the school context, to learn skills of online interaction if they aren’t beyond “hanging out.” Then, good projects would lay out learning goals, provide models along a variety of possible outcomes, and then allow students to plan a timeframe and reach out to networks of interest, exploring or operating fluently, depending on their level of skill and comfort. Outcomes may be assessed on rubrics created by the student and “co-conspirators.” The teacher becomes a facilitator or coach in this model, giving up control for the possibility of greater student engagement and authentic learning.

Learning is Play

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Here’s something awesome: Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show. Her motto? “Have fun, play around and get out there and make something,” I came across Sylvia via Dr. Gary Stager’s blog post about her blog which features some withering critiques of educator attitudes about technology and learning. But you can read that on your own if you’d like. What I’m interested in is Sylvia’s amazing perspective on learning.

Again, her motto is “Have fun, play around and get out there and make something.” Mess around, geek out, and keep in mind that there are no real consequences of failure except more learning. Learning is not a competition or a zero-sum game. When I learn something, that’s not one less thing you can learn. In fact, when I learn something, you are more likely to learn as a result because we are social learners. So, relax. Have fun. Play, and give yourself a break when you feel like you’re not getting it.

Anxiety over performance, programmed into everybody through a focus on grades from a tender age through post-graduate education, is as normal and predictable as tail chasing in kennels. It’s a totally normal reaction to the institutional structure of schools. But, there is hope for all learners! For one, school ends eventually. For two, even if school continues, abandoning identification with grades and performance is tantamount to liberation and can be ours, easily. Approaching a problem as play, as tinkering, is the key to escape from anxiety. Sylvia is cool – she’s crazy talented and knowledgeable, curious and driven, funny and creative. She has the keys to the kingdom. She plays, and learns, and teaches while she does so. What a role model for students and teachers alike!

Plan B

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During my Masters studies at Western New Mexico University’s Gallup Graduate Studies Center (Go Mustangs!), I was lucky to have an excellent educational technology teacher. Her mantra, as sound today as it was in 2005, was always have a Plan B. On the rez, this made sense because wind might knock out the power, or the six year old Macs might just blink out, out, like brief candles. But here in shiny Switzerland, land of clockwork efficiency and whole cream, why bother? We’re one to one, baby. There are tablet laptops, iPad, smartphones, Skype chats with experts, Facebook study groups, Youtube channels, Smartboards, wireless webs of connectivity connecting us to Google Docs, blogs, Twitter, you name it. I regularly exhort the values of Google Documents over Word because it’s always there, documents don’t get lost, or ruined, or deleted. Always there. Almost always.

When an air conditioner starts bellowing smoke into the server room, when coolant sprays out into the room, when the fire department screams up to the front door, when a roar of chatter is followed by a hush signifying a collective awareness that this is not a drill, when the evacuation is over and we’ve shuffled back into the classrooms, it’s time for Plan B.

No Google, no email, no network drives, today was an ongoing exercise in the recognition of how connected we are and how invisible so many connections are. During prep time, I simply shifted to grading papers – analog papers. The grades, however, were impossible to enter into my electronic gradebook. I couldn’t copy rubrics because our copy machines require a login. Students arrived to class with presentations prepared, to school ready to print revised essays, and to club meetings that were announced over the intercom since our announcement blog was not accessible. In my classes, we shifted to texts and put off due dates or guided practice in writing that is stored online or on network drives. Plan B was an easy pivot today, but this was also well-timed for me. If this happened on Monday, Plan B would have been much weaker. Also, if I wasn’t well-stocked with texts and materials outside of the digital realm, today would have been a total wash. So Plan B may rely on possession of some physical copies of texts, an array of manipulatives, sets of data on paper, printed case studies, or whatever tangible thing is relevant to a classroom.

A good Plan B should fall within the arc of curriculum relevant to the classroom moment, but it can be a shift to something a little different. I found today that kids appreciated the situation because they were affected, too, even if the focus changed a little. A good Plan B can be:

  • an opportunity for students to explore content together in an unusual or creative way – if you’re stuck, why not do skits about pi? What is there to lose?
  • to work within existing cooperative structures to some purposeful end – make teams and give them some task. In a worst case scenario, students are learning to work together if they aren’t learning content or content area skills.
  • a chance for extension activities tangentially related to content or skills focuses – whatcha got? What fascinates you about your current area of study? Delve into it for a class period, do some document review from texts, go to the library and find historical fiction, line up pencils on the floor like divisions at Gettysburg and fight it out. Again, there’s nothing to lose with Plan B.
  • extended discussions of content allowing students to connect opinions to classroom material (or ideas beyond the classroom). My AP Literature class had a great discussion about transgression in part one of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go that focused on the “brainwashing” at Hailsham, student self-policing, and connections between being raised by parents and what students call “brainwashing” in the fictional setting of the novel. It was pretty awesome. I had scheduled a split between discussion and a team writing activity in Google Docs, which could have been done on paper, but I pushed the writing to the last 10 minutes of class and pared down to simply writing a thesis over the weekend, probably 10 minutes of homework, for discussion and revision on Monday. In this case, Plan B led to a nice, interactive discussion in which kids were paying attention to one another and digging into ideas of importance to them and to our world.

Flexible educators can usually salvage valuable learning from the ashes of a technological brushfire, and many more ways than this brief list exist. Still, today was a reminder and a lesson that we’re always just a broken hose or a stalled fan away from Plan B.

Summer and Institutional Memory

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As another school year kicks off, I’m struck by the loss of plans, ideas, concepts, and such over the summer. We come together for a week of meetings and some frantic preparations from micro to macro, individual to collaborative groups to department to grade level to whole school. Always, frustration ripples just under the surface as people arrive back from wonderful vacations that I value greatly, but arrive back with adjusted priorities and minor confusions bred by distance and change. While I’m not ready to give up a nice chunk of vacation, I can’t help but wonder what the week before school might be like if we had a week or two for paid curriculum development, research, in-house professional development, or just time to be together as professional educators without any else going on before and after a nice summer holiday. What might happen during that time, that uninterrupted, relaxed work time? I imagine this past week would be more focused and less hectic.

Independance Day Musings: Democracy & Education

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A large number of human relationships in any social group are still upon the machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to get desired results, without reference to the emotional and intellectual disposition and consent of those used. Such uses express physical superiority, or superiority of position, skill, technical ability, and command of tools, mechanical or fiscal. So far as the relations of parent and child, teacher and pupil, employer and employee, governor and governed, remain upon this level, they form no true social group, no matter how closely their respective activities touch one another. Giving and taking of orders modifies action and results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, a communication of interests.

Dewey, John (2009). Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education (Kindle Locations 157-161). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

On a beautiful day in Switzerland, July 4, 2011, I am reminded of the power of true, open democracy to shape people into a society. I am also reminded of something a consultant said to me once. She was from a private company in Florida hired to fix my school on the Navajo Nation which had been placed in the NCLB solitary confinement cell called “Restructuring.” We were learning structures for getting feedback from students and using this feedback not to influence instruction so much, but more to get kids to buy into certain structures being laid down from this corporate consultant. When someone asked what to do if the feedback didn’t support the prescribed structures, the consultant said: “Well, you can do a degree of facilimanipulation.” Facilitate to manipulate. Nifty.

This is the Fox News discussion model. Students in this chronically disfunctional school wouldn’t be given a voice democratically. Instead, I would stand before them, the Anglo Sage, and manipulate them with a guise of cheer and helpfulness to swallow whatever I was handing down from on high (which had been handed down to me from on higher). Beyond the historically appalling subtext, the text itself is terrible: facilimanipulate. This Frankenword has become an ironic joke between my wife and I, but I can understand it’s lazy appeal – trick the kids into thinking they count. Yikes. See quote above – no shared purposes or communicated interests in this essentially authoritarian model.

So, I consider today ways to continue making students real partners in the classroom, with agency in their learning process and experiences. I’m planning action research in a new course (for me) entitled “Digital Journalism.” Together, students and I will explore how best to learn through experience about doing journalism and publishing work in an online student newspaper. It’s very easy to give up the reigns in this course because I’m clearly not an expert journalist, so our shared purpose together will be learning the subject through actually doing it. I’m really excited because students shaping this course is meta-agency – students will help design the course in order to publish their work. Hard work, but good work, ahead. Maybe we’ll even form a mutually beneficial social group!

John Dewey had some great ideas 90 years ago and you can read them for free today! Happy Independence Day!

Creating an Environment for Writing

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Edutopia’s blog section has a nice piece up today with “Five Fundamentals for Creating a Positive Writing Atmosphere” that I like a great deal and not just because it begins with one of my classroom mantras: writers write. As teachers of writing, and all teachers are writing and communication teachers (and models), this piece is worth a look. I particularly like the idea of modeling writing for our students, which is one of the reasons I have a class blog and why I love #4 on the list, which is to “set pure tone” by doing the writing assignments yourself:

Jeffrey Wilhelm, professor of English education at Boise State University and the director of the Boise State Writing Project, believes that teachers need to write in order to teach writing. In his interview for the book, Teaching the Neglected “R”, he clearly states that it’s important for teachers to do the writing assignments they give students and then ask, “Would I do the work I’m asking my students to do?

This is essential – could I write a descriptive essay about Thomas Jefferson using my five senses? What did Jefferson smell like? How does he smell today? What kind of grade would that piece get me in fifth grade? Writing responses to AP-style prompts and sharing them with students has informed my instruction, given me compassion for some of the uncool realities behind on-the-spot literature surprise attacks, and shown me the potential value of document-based synthesis surprise attacks.

I also value the realization that writing takes time and so often schools cram in more and more and more, choking out time for creative enterprise and energy. Students amaze me at the depth and beauty of their output so often whilst being strung between endless club, activity, academic, artistic, and social demands. Some freedom and space in both the physical and time dimensions can give opportunities for creative output – written or otherwise.

An environment for writing in the classroom corresponds to an environment for creative, active learning in the school and beyond. I’ll be thinking about this blog piece as I plot out next year’s curriculum and loose plan in the next few weeks.

Learning Outside of the Classroom

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In the midst of our first day of a “Classroom Without Walls” trip, one of my English students who is on the trip looked at me as we surveyed the landscape of canton Schwyz in Switzerland and said “It’s really amazing how fast we learn. I mean, this morning we had no idea about any of this.”

Amen.

Not the inside of a school building

We began the morning slowly after a night fitful sleeping, as it turned out, by everyone. We ran and bounced our way through a cow pasture to begin with, practicing the run, brake, lean-and-run-quickly technique for launching. I learned run, brake, left, and right in German. Slowly, each paragliding student, myself included, worked her or his way up the hill, getting longer and longer flights. Eventually, we launched from the highest point and practiced turning. I learned that I am the Greatest American Hero of Swiss paragliding, landing much like Mickey Mantle coming into third base. This is my goal for tomorrow. The kids flourished, learning at different rates and succeeding or struggling with different parts of the technique, but all completing the day with successful flights and a high level of stoke for tomorrow, and for each successive day. The stoke is for flying, for doing something new, for succeeding, for learning easily, quickly, and authentically. When a boy’s glider collapsed and spun him around, no teacher needed to tell him that he hadn’t lifted off from the ground. When a girl launched five meters off the ground on her first try, she didn’t need a grade to prove that she had nailed it. It’s learning to do something personally valued, even if not valuable on the open market, that brings on the stoke.

I’m lucky to be teaching at a school with amazing resources through which kids are granted these kinds of opportunities. I wish all kids got them. At the end of the week, I’m not at all sure what quantifiable metrics we’ll have fulfilled, but that should clear up much of what we need to know about quantifiable metrics and learning. Sometimes, oftentimes, teachers and students alike need opportunities to soar and opportunities to make hard landings in environments that don’t look like school, but are.

High School English – The Right Argument

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Kim Brooks has published an excellent piece in Salon.com entitled “Death to High School English,” and it’s spot on. So spot on, in fact, that it’s painful to read. I make the statement every day that I’m a writing teacher, and the statement becomes an argument over time. I love literature; like Brooks, my latter two years of high school English were an awakening for me, but so was photography and AP Art History, which she didn’t have a chance to take. For me, the opportunity to read around the canon, pieces like Cat’s Cradle and Travels With Charley did me a world of good, as did arguing vehemently through my ignorance with teachers and shaping my evolving arguments into cogent, well-organized paragraphs and essays. In university, I struggled to find a better meal ticket major than English Literature, but I stopped caring about other people’s concepts of my future and sank into a deep love of words, sentences, paragraphs, lines, stanzas, books, plays, films, and essays. This was for me, and I gave back, writing myself, mostly for myself, but loving every moment of the engagement with language.

Now, I teach high school English, and I’ve learned beyond the shadow of a doubt that I love teaching argument, media, nonfiction, and writing, writing, writing, but that it is really hard work. Unsurprisingly, I’ve had my best success in classes of between one and six. Today, I teach classes up to 18, which is still a fine number and in some ways better than a handful, because learning cooperatively often catalyzes persuasive writing and revision processes for kids who might be otherwise disengaged. Ironically, in my new position I am a literature teacher – AP Literature and courses for younger high school students designed to get them to literature, IB or AP. I have shaped my approach to non-fiction based courses like AP Language, for example, to AP Lit, working in essay forms, sentence writing, but not nearly enough grammar writ large, opting for more of a less intensive, personalized approach that doesn’t work so great. In fact, I’m looking for the grammar instruction cure all – if you’ve got it, send it my way. My personal goal for the past three consecutive years has been to improve my grammar instruction and I’ve failed three years in a row.  The good news is that it’s my goal for next year, and I’ve got two excellent partners teaching 10th grade English who share the goal.  Additionally, we share a goal to shape the curriculum at least equally around reading and writing, which is exciting. I’m bringing my experience in writing-first curriculum, which by no means abandons reading instruction, and shaping it to allow for exploration of texts through writing in addition to discussion. Or, at least that’s the plan.

Ultimately, high school English is about performance – what are we asking kids to do? Brooks’s students report:

Those who didn’t make it onto the honors or A.P. track hardly mention writing or reading at all. They talk about giving oral presentations and keeping reading journals evaluated with a big, meaningless check. They reveal putting on skits, reenacting some scene in a novel or play whose title they can’t recall. One student recounts a month of junior English class in which she and her classmates produced digital short film adaptations of the trial in “The Scarlet Letter.”

“Sounds fun,” I say to this student, a girl who would not know how to summarize a source or correct a sentence fragment if her life depended on it.

Obviously, these students are doing little to anything relevant either to themselves or their current or future language skill needs. I pick up hints of my own failings in that description, for sure. In a best case scenario, students are writing and reading a great deal, revising their work and reflecting on their learning outcomes. Mixed in there should be authentic tasks that aren’t writing and reading, but perhaps one or the other, or a media-based facsimile of writing skills, like outlining. Still, I’ve fallen prey to EnglishLite, with lots of presentations and media, and little writing or reading, justifying it by student choice. I should have worked harder and smarter to get everyone on board with what they needed to do, unit by unit.

So, what do students need to do? I take it as understood that nobody needs to read Faulkner or Joyce, Victorian novels, or Derek Walcott (everyone should read Derek Walcott, but only if they want to live a complete life as a human being, but maybe the world needs derivative traders, too). I also take it as understood that everyone should read an essay by David James Duncan, Richard Rodriguez, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Virginia Wolff, or Barbara Ehrenreich. Read, and then what?  Do they need to learn how to write? Brooks answers brilliantly:

I bounce the question off another friend, Amelia Shapiro, a longtime writing tutor and composition professor who now directs support services at a university in Hawaii.

“I hate that fucking question,” she replies. “I hear it all the time and I hate it. No one asks this question about calculus, but who uses calculus besides math majors? If the question’s going to be asked about writing it should be asked about every subject. Even students who aren’t going to stay in college need to know how to write. We’ve all gotten emails or cover letters where we’ve judged people based on the writing. It’s not an essay but it’s still communication and people fail at it all the time in profound and meaningful ways.”

When I ask her why she thinks there’s such resistance to prioritizing and teaching writing, given its numerous applications, given its overlap with critical thinking skills, analytical skills, basic communication skills, she hesitates for a moment, then answers in three words: “It’s not fun.”

True, but then, teaching (and for that matter, learning) isn’t always fun. Changing my kid’s dirty diapers isn’t fun. Dragging my fat ass onto a treadmill isn’t fun. Helping my grandmother “fix” her computer isn’t fun. Sometimes we do things not because they’re fun but because they’re important.

In a word: Word! This is it, the hard, painful truth. Teaching writing serves kids, and it’s important. Writing is communication. Every day colleagues write me emails that could mean at least two things, and even with what I like to consider advanced reading skills in English, I struggle to discern their meanings. I judge – I’m a teacher. You judge, too. Students should learn to write not because it’s a “21st Century Skill,” but because it is an essential skill. Also, writing is thinking about text, and about the world, and about our own values, and there’s nothing more engaging or authentic.

I could go on all night about what is true in this piece, but read it yourself and share a comment or two. Let’s discuss, in writing. After all, I’m a writing teacher.

Thinking About Feedback

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As I rounded essay number 45 or so and headed for third base today, my eyes were dry and I had the familiar essay ache that doubtless plagued my students at the end of their timed write. I enjoy reading student writing, and actually look forward to assessments like timed essays because it gives me data, information on what kids have learned, improved upon, missed completely, or ignored outright. I write a lot of feedback on student writing, and I push myself to be specific every time. I also try to focus on no more than three areas of growth, tied to our writing rubric, for each kid each time. There are many balls to keep in the air, including goals from previous writing assessments, but I dig it and enjoy the interactive nature of reading student writing and providing specific, targeted feedback.

So I read, I write, and I give students back their writing. They flip to the grade, roll their eyes, give high-fives, gasp in delight or horror, and ignore everything else. In the past, I had students who were much less grade driven and/or had classes with very few students, in which we could all sit down individually and discuss each student’s performance at length. I’ve made some minor changes to providing feedback, asking students to write metacognitive responses prior to seeing feedback or grades, but in larger (but by no means large) classes, I haven’t found the magic trick that will move students past simply looking at grades and shutting down or throwing up defensive walls. Of course, the same thing that works every time takes a long time to establish: a mutually respectful, open, and honest collegial relationship.

So, I have some ideas about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to feedback and focusing students on feedback. What doesn’t work:

  • Grade Centrism – Grades just get in the way. In a perfect situation in which any rubrics handed down from upon high are very valid, used with and by students regularly, and common across curriculum areas, grades become measures of performance. In less than perfect situations, grades quickly turn into arbitrary judgements of the good and the bad, the smart and the not-smart, or whatever the teenaged mind might read into the ambiguity between performance and grades. Not good, feedback doesn’t get through here.
  • Competitive Academic Environments – Collegiality counts. If you are an obstacle to my success, if this is a zero-sum situation, we’re in trouble. Related to the above.
  • Shifting Language – As a writing teacher, it’s a little crazy to me how many terms teachers have for the word “thesis.” It’s equally crazy how many different ideas teachers have for what a thesis should be. If I laud a student’s voice, and another teacher applauds that student’s style, and another teacher cheers that student’s tone (but without meaning tone, as I define it, as the speaker’s relationship to the subject), the student will think she is doing three things well. If one of us gives negative feedback on voice/style/tone/etc, how will she fix the problem? This even happens in math, I think, when kids learn different terms for operations at different levels. We have to know this means learning the same thing differently, time and again. Getting our language aligned can streamline learning and certainly make feedback laser focused.
  • Vague Feedback – I learned this from Grant Wiggins. “Good job!” Every time I write “Yes!” or “Great!” it’s a clarion call to keep writing: “Yes – sensible identification of tone in narration and effect on the theme of confusion in the text!” or “Great use of a signal verb to introduce a detail from the text!”
  • Dropping It Like It’s Hot – Got, got, got to go metacognitive, ideally before they see my feedback at all. This can be tough sometimes, but it must be done. This can go hand in hand with portfolio assessments, which is why I say we’ve got, got, got to be doing e-portfolios, but that is for another day.

There are more things that don’t work. What works reads like a flipped list:

  • Performance Feedback, not Grades – Sure, grades, I get it. It’s the way we do things. Sweet. Still, let’s change school cultures to focus on performance, through authentic performance tasks for assessment. Let’s show kids what great is, how to create great, and then assess the result with lots of specific feedback.
  • Cooperative Academic Environments – Nobody is an obstacle to your success – they are either an asset utilized or ignored. It’s a paradigm for mutual success. If this is working, everybody can provide constructive, specific feedback at any level in any direction and everybody learns, including instructors and administrators.
  • Aligned Language – Make the language match across the disciplines. Wow, does this take a lot of work. It’s worth it, though. Ancillary benefits are clearer expectations and a greater conversation around big ideas like differentiated instruction and assessment, what that means, what non-negotiable performance benchmarks might be. I don’t know what bad outcomes of this slow process can be.
  • Specific Feedback – Specific and aligned to expectations shared in advance of, as part of, or through instruction. Language must be non-judgmental, but also clear in terms of what has been done well, what hasn’t, the implications, and the path forward.
  • Spending Time with Feedback – Here’s a great opportunity for metacognitive response, conferencing (portfolios!), revision, peer discussions, and so much more. My action research for my MAT focused on student-created rubrics from model work or exemplars – it wasn’t all perfect, so perhaps model could be a misleading term for some. Students can create powerful assessment tools and, through so doing, truly internalize the expectations and produce amazing products as a result. It’s like a feedback loop inside a feedback loop.

Anyway, here’s a quick breakdown of what works from Grant Wiggins, as published by New Horizons.org:

Elements of a an educative assessment system:

1. Standards

· specifications (e.g. 80 wpm w/ 0 mistakes)
· models (exemplars of each point on the scale – e.g. anchor papers)
· criteria: conditions to be met to achieve goals – e.g. “persuasive and clear” writing

2. Feedback

· Facts: what events/behavior happened, related to goal
· Impact: a description of the effects of the facts (results and/or reactions)
· Commentary: the facts and impact explained in the context of the goal; an explanation of all confirmation and disconfirmation concerning the results

3. Elements of evaluation

· Evaluation: value judgments made about the facts and their impact
· Praise / Blame: appraisal of individual’s performance in light of expectations for that performer

4. Elements of Guidance

· Advice about what to do in light of the feedback
· Re-direction of current practice in light of results

There is more outstanding information at the Wiggins article linked above and here regarding how to create a feedback cycle. It’s genius in its simplicity and power. At any rate, as I read, wrote, and reflected, I wondered what makes me effective as a writing teacher. As I consider all of the things I’m doing differently now from last year, it’s the commonality of my feedback on student writing that helps students learn and improve more than any one thing. At least, that’s my thought for this busy Sunday, and it’s what led to the reflections herein. I wonder what works for other people in terms of providing feedback for student learning.