“I don’t give them the answers; I give them the questions and then we do activities that help them find the answers.”

This is the teaching philosophy of Deborah Tackman, a high school teacher in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who was listed on an “All-USA Teacher Team” in an issue of USA Today. As you read the brief comments of the other 19 teachers, notice how many of them obviously base their teaching practices on constructivist theory of how people learn:

USA Today’s 2004 All-USA Teacher Team

John Mahoney
Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, Washington, D.C., 33 Years
He allows students to guide their own learning and is always available to students whether or not they are in his class.

Kelly Hunt
Hathaway Brown School, Shaker Heights, Ohio, 11 Years
She inspires a transition of students by opening their eyes to outside learning instead of focusing learning in the traditional classroom.

Timothy Bunch
Communities in Schools, South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice, Columbia, S.C., 15 Years
He focuses his class, of disciplined children, on choices rather than unfairness. “It’s 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react.”

Mark Mueller
River Bluff Middle School, Stoughton, WI, 11 Years
He is interested in appealing to students at their own level. He also created a “Forensic Science Lab” which turned kids into crime-solving detectives. The underlying skill is the ability to express ideas well.

Scott Jordan
Cuba-Ruhford Central School, Cuba, NY, 14 Years
He set up a fish hatchery and wildlife research center because he believes that “animals are educational hooks.” He also focuses his classroom around hands-on-learning. He also teaches a scuba diving class so upper-class students can research underwater pond life first hand.

Ellen Smith
Grove Elementary School, Belle Glade, FL, 26 Years
She incorporates exercise into her teaching. She set up an outdoor solar system and map of the world so that kids can learn about the planets and continents while being active in exercise.

Pamela Hall
Kaiserslautern Elementary School, Kaiserslautern, Germany, 15 Years
She allows students to set their own goals and progress at their own speed. Basis her lessons around what students want to learn.

Jill Fairhurst Hall
Brown Elementary School, Brownsburg, IN, 24 Years
She teaches through thematic units “students took out a $40 bank loan to make Native American crafts, sold them, paid back the loan and bought a $350 wood-burning school for a New Mexico Navajo family.”

Cathy Bonneville Hix
Swanson Middle School, Arlington, VA, 26 Years
She has students write their own textbooks with political cartoons and answers to “big picture” questions.

Jill Sayuri Nakamura
Wishon Elementary School, Fresno, CA, 17 Years
She makes a personal connection with students which encourages them to work hard to succeed because then students build a level of trust with her.

Sandy Swanson
Menomonee Falls High School, WI, 31 Years
Teaches “need to know things” through the “nice to know things.” She relies on imaginative projects to teach crucial working skills.

Suzanne Ransleben
Carroll High School, Corpus Christi, TX, 20 Years
She connects learning to life. She has students paint their favorite line from Romeo and Juliet.

Linda Dadon
Kauffner Academy, Norfolk, VA, 13 Years
She incorporates “regular” students into her classes with Special Ed. students. She concentrates on what her students can do and not on what they can’t.

Charlotte Mohling
Washington Springs School District, 29 Years
She makes students responsible for their own learning through self paced technology courses.

Connie Christy
Aynor Elementary School, 22 Years
She “gets teachers’ lesson plans so that she can help; first graders count by twos, fives and 10s while drumming.”

Judy Reeves
Baldwin County High School, Bay Minette, AL, 13 Years
She has students work with professionals to restore wetlands. She also has students set up a lesson plan to take fourth and fifth graders on an all day trip to the state parks.

Debbie Kohler
Sequoyah High School, Canton, GA, 24 Years
She developed a grade replacement system which reflects student’s grading systems. She gives individualized assignments to help students master building block concepts and uses real life applications to teach math.

Jane Koszoru
College Academy at Broward Community College, Davie, FL., 33 Years
She holds American Literature dinner parties with students dressing, speaking, and cooking as their authors.

Deborah Tackmann
North High School, Eau Claire, WI, 28 Years
She says: “I don’t give them the answers; I give them the questions and then we do activities that help them find the answers.”

Linda Poling
Millbrook High School, Raleigh, N.C., 28 years
She invites guests who speak from personal experiences and has the class devise questions for each speaker.

“2004 All-USA Teaching Team,” USA Today. October 14, 2004.
The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

The Institute is currently registering the limited number of teams that will be enrolled for the 2006 summer conference. Don’t miss the opportunity for this unique conference that models the constructivist behaviors that teaches are using increasingly in the classroom. Check out the website of The Institute for Learning Centered Education: www.learnercentereded.org or, e-mail a request for information.

A $300 discount is available for teams registered prior to January 31, 2006.

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

Here’s a suggestion that doesn’t cost money, is easy, and can be a stepping stone toward improving the image of the school in the minds of parents or other visitors.

Most schools have a sign near the entrance way – often the first thing one sees when visiting a school. It instructs the visitor to report to the office.

Look at the sign in your school. Does it present itself as an order? Is it cold and unfeeling? Or does it convey the message that you are genuinely happy that the visitor has graced your premises?

Of course there is a need to alert guests that they must visit the office before venturing elsewhere. However, there are many ways to convey a message. Have you thought of asking some students (perhaps in an art class) to write the message and create an attractive border? Have you thought of the different ways you can say the same thing – some of them warm and inviting and others cold and almost insulting?

Enough said on this subject. Here’s one more brief point that was effectively brought to our attention by our colleague Larry Byrd who is as exceptional in the field of interpersonal relations as Larry Bird is on the basketball court.

Larry once spoke with a committee of teachers who were concerned that their curriculum needed to reflect more of the culture of the minority students in the school. While encouraging them to continue this effort, Larry said, “There is something even easier and perhaps more significant that you can do:

“Walk the length of your building and look at the walls and the displays through the eyes of those students who are in the minority. If I were a student who was a member of a minority group, would I see anything at all that would give me the message that a place was set at the table for me? Would there be even one picture on the wall, display on a table, or anything at all that would reflect my unique background or the culture that I consider to be my heritage?”

The following day, the teachers and their administrator did walk the halls of their school building and found it relatively easy to make a few adjustments to what could be seen so that everyone could find at least one thing about which they could say “This is here for me.”

I will end this now by recalling another admonition of Larry’s: “There’s beauty in brevity.”

The Institute is currently registering the limited number of teams that will be enrolled for the 2006 summer conference. Don’t miss the opportunity for this unique conference that models the constructivist behaviors that teaches are using increasingly in the classroom. Check out the website of The Institute for Learning Centered Education: www.learnercentereded.org or, e-mail a request for information.

A $300 discount is available for teams registered prior to January 31, 2006.

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

When I ask university undergraduate students what they need most in college that they were not prepared for in high school, the response is almost always, “Time Management Skills.” Recently I dialogued with a bright college sophomore and this point was brought home even more forcefully.

Lauren (not her real name) was a pleasure to have in class. She was attentive, participated in the frequent group activities, and demonstrated an understanding of course content whenever she spoke.

Unfortunately, Lauren neglected to submit the first three assignments when they were due. Whereas most students would see me after class or send an e-mail if an assignment was going to be late, Lauren gave no indication she was even aware that more than two weeks had gone by since the date the initial assignment was due. I sent her an e-mail asking when I could expect her “papers” and received no response. Then she was absent for two of the next four classes (the class meets twice weekly). I sent her another e-mail indicating that her failure to hand in three assignments, together with a growing number of absences, would leave me no choice but to send in a failing grade at mid semester if there wasn’t immediate improvement. I also suggested we meet to discuss her situation.

Within 24 hours I had a response promising that she would attend all future classes, apologizing for the tardiness of the assignments and promising that I would receive them - one every two days until all three were submitted. True to her word, Lauren followed through by submitting each of the late assignments. What surprised me was that each assignment warranted an “A”. Usually when a student displays a pattern of late submissions, it is because they are struggling (often with other courses, not just mine). Rarely does a student who fits Lauren’s pattern ever attain the quality of work that I received from Lauren. I gave her the “4” she earned as a grade and then indicated a loss of credit for being late.

Throughout the semester, this pattern continued: assignments were rarely submitted on time, Lauren never acknowledged that her assignments would be late and didn’t submit them until I either asked her personally or sent her an e-mail, sometimes two weeks after the due date.

At the conclusion of the semester, I require each of my students to meet with me for 10 to 15 minutes. I station myself at the Student Center (near the food), and the students come to my table, one after another, for our meetings. My primary purpose is to get feedback for the purpose of instructional improvement (as opposed to high stakes assessment), but also to give me one final assessment of how well the students understand what I have attempted to teach.

I looked Lauren in the eye, smiled, and said, “You amaze me. You are so talented. Your work is of such good quality and you demonstrate, in class, way above average interest and understanding of what this course is all about. Yet, you rarely submitted an assignment until long after it was due, missed five of the 28 classes (more than any other student), and I wonder if you would have submitted any assignments if I hadn’t gotten on your case. It’s a shame that you will receive less than a ‘3’ in this course even though the quality of your work is ‘4’.”

Here was Lauren’s response:

“I was a straight A student in a private high school. When I came here as a freshman I crashed. I was on academic probation. I am still struggling (first semester, sophomore year).”

“With these kinds of study habits, how did you maintain an “A” average in high school?” I asked.

“The private school was so structured that you had to submit all your work on time,” Lauren responded. “You were monitored and were not allowed to do anything until your homework was completed. I didn’t develop any study habits because I didn’t have to”

Lauren’s case is extreme. She obviously has problems that go beyond the ordinary adjustment to college life and developing time management skills. However, her situation is just a more severe example of what many college students say is their biggest challenge: learning to manage their time. Many students do experience a reality check during their first semester in college as they learn that they cannot get by in college with the same inattention to their workload that sufficed in high school. But most adjust more easily than Lauren.

As a teacher, Lauren’s story has me thinking of the balance that has to be struck in providing scaffolding for students: on the one hand, there must be enough support to enable the teacher to spot a student who is slipping through the cracks either on a particular task or in the course. On the other hand, the effective teacher does not provide more support than is necessary – that deprives the student of the opportunity to develop skills at independent learning.

A few years ago, I asked a student to tell me what was of the most value in the course I had just taught. He said, “By not giving me as many reminders of what I had to do as most teachers would, you forced me to develop time management skills.

A few minutes later, in response to my question about what I should do differently, the student answered, “You should collect our journal entries after every class (instead of at the end of the month). At the start of the semester,” he continued, “I found myself leaving my journal writing until the end of the month and it was very difficult to catch up.”

I thought for a minute and then asked the student one final question: “If I had led you by the nose and required submission of journal entries after every class, would you still be saying that the most valuable part of this class was that you were forced to develop time management skills?”

The Institute is currently registering the limited number of teams that will be enrolled for the 2006 summer conference. Don’t miss the opportunity for this unique conference that models the constructivist behaviors that teaches are using increasingly in the classroom. Check out the website of The Institute for Learning Centered Education: www.learnercentereded.org or, e-mail a request for information.

A $300 discount is available for teams registered prior to January 31, 2006.

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

Here is my favorite poem (reprinted from the past few years). I have told my children that I could have no finer legacy than to believe that I have influenced them to adopt the philosophy of life implicit in this poem about “Cliff Klingenhagen”:

CLIFF KLINGENHAGEN
by Edward Arlington Robinson

Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dine

With him one day; and after soup and meat,

And all the other things there were to eat,

Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine

And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign

For me to choose at all, he took the draught

Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed

It off, and said the other was mine.

And when I asked him what the deuce he meant

By doing that, he only looked at me

And grinned, and said it was a way of his.

And though I know the fellow, I have spent

Long time a wondering when I shall be

As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.

I wish you all greetings of the season. In the spirit of whatever holiday you celebrate, it is my hope that by practicing the selflessness of Cliff Klingenhagen we can all model behaviors we wish to pass along to children and, in so doing, bring happiness to our own lives.

The Institute is currently registering the limited number of teams that will be enrolled for the 2006 summer conference. Don’t miss the opportunity for this unique conference that models the constructivist behaviors that teaches are using increasingly in the classroom. Check out the website of The Institute for Learning Centered Education: www.learnercentereded.org or, e-mail a request for information.

A $300 discount is available for teams registered prior to January 31, 2006.

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2005, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.