TOPIC:   Sixteen Instructional Objectives of an Effective Teacher

Date: January 28, 2006                     Newsletter Edition: Volume 7, Issue 2

One of my motivations to continue writing is the number of people who indicate they find enough value to share some of these newsletter issues with their colleagues. Here is one that we hope will have practical value for classroom teachers and school administrators.

What you are about to read represents the culmination of years of collaboration among Pat Flynn, Paul Vermette, Mike Smith and me. It will be the focus of our next book.

For the past eight years, as the best kind of staff development, I have brought Dr. Vermette into classrooms to teach lessons for teachers who would like to see constructivist-based practices modeled with their own students. In a single day, Dr. Vermette may teach six lessons, ranging from teaching first grade students to tell time to preparing high school students for a lesson on calculus. As he teaches, I record what he is doing and, afterward, he shares his reasoning for everything the classroom teacher and I have observed.

Few of us can replicate the charisma and spontaneity that Dr. Vermette brings to a classroom. How many of us would be comfortable beginning a lesson in multiplication by asking students to high-five each other? Or, would it be your style to have students design an amusement park ride through the digestive system, or use Fanny the fire fighter as the focus of a lesson on persuasive writing?

While none of us can be a Vermette, we can be guided by the same objectives that he uses to make instructional decisions.

What follows are the sixteen instructional objectives of an effective teacher which Pat Flynn, Mike Smith, Paul and I articulated after analyzing Dr. Vermette’s lessons and asking the question, “What do all of his lessons have in common?” These sixteen instructional objectives are listed below and in the attachment.

You may want to use this as a checklist when you (as a teacher) review a lesson you are about to teach or when you (as an administrator) assess a teacher’s classroom performance. 

INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES  of  an EFFECTIVE TEACHER

Teachers have the responsibility to foster every student’s cognitive achievement; a responsibility that includes nurturing every student’s social/emotional growth.

Cognitive achievement can be defined as having the ability to:

¨    analyze and synthesize information to create understandings

¨    transform current understandings into new knowledge

How do teachers know if their practices foster cognitive achievement? If a teacher can respond affirmatively to the following sixteen questions, the probability is high that s/he is nurturing cognitive achievement and is, therefore, an effective teacher: 

The Foundation (underlying classroom practices)  

ª     Safe and nurturing environment – do you create a classroom environment where students feel free to think critically and express their views without fear?

ª     Public speaking – do you structure lessons that require and nurture public speaking, in pairs and small groups as well as in front of the entire class?

ª     Opportunities for success – do you provide every student with frequent opportunities to experience “success”?

ª     Validation of student work and responses – do you let each student know when his or her efforts are praiseworthy?

The Exploratory Phase (the first part of the lesson or unit)

ª     Grab attention – do you begin class in a manner likely to encourage students to look forward to what comes next?

ª     Prepare students to engage – do you create activities that focus student thinking, excite their imaginations, and prepare them to meet and exceed the learning standards.

ª     Assess and access prior knowledge – do you design activities that will help students (and you) to access and assess their prior knowledge and interests?

The Discovery Phase (when students learn and demonstrate they are learning what you have set as your objectives for the lesson)

ª     The learning objectives – do you clearly state the one, two, or three specific things you want your students to learn? Have you cast these specific objectives in terms of what your students will understand, perform or create?

ª     Authentic task – do you frame learning tasks that are as authentic as possible and that will allow students to demonstrate their skill with or understanding of the learning objective(s)?

ª     Ownership – do you create learning tasks that enable students to feel pride and assume responsibility for their own learning?

ª     Options – do you offer students optional ways to accomplish the learning task, and therefore reach the learning objectives(s)?

ª     Multiple intelligences – do you offer students frequent opportunities to utilize their stronger intelligences (recognizing that there are going to be times when they will also have to rely on their weaker ones)?

ª     Appropriate resources – do you make sure that the resources necessary to accomplish the assigned student-centered activities are available, or can be made available, to students?

ª     Interventions – do you look for opportunities (teachable moments) to intervene either in response to student questions or in reaction to student work, by “working the room” while students are engaged in an activity?

ª     Cognitively rich questions – do you seize every opportunity to intervene in student work with questions that require students to think critically?

ª     Assessment measures – do you utilize multiple forms of assessment to judge student performance? Is instructional improvement the primary reason you assess students?  Is teacher observation structured to be the most meaningful form of assessment?

¨    If you are a teacher, are these among your “must achieve” objectives as you design and teach a lesson?

¨    If you are an administrator, are these the objectives you are guiding your teachers to strive for through assessment of their classroom performance?

¨    If you are a staff developer, are these the objectives you train teachers and administrators to focus on?

Acknowledgement is due Dr. Jim Shuman, chair of the Education Department at St. Lawrence University, for his validation of these objectives and contributions to this work.

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.

To qualify for the discount, this deadline is FINAL!

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) 2006, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

• We were facilitating a process of Restructuring Schools through Shared Decision Making and we worked with the Niagara Falls City District for two years in the early nineties. The district was also involved in training for Total Quality Management (TQM) and a building principal asked a TQM representative “What is our role in TQM?”

The representative thought for a moment and then responded: “Principals need to be cheerleaders. Restructuring is really difficult for teachers, parents, students, and others. You need to be cheering them on, letting them know they are appreciated and valued.”

• David Kurzawa was superintendent of the Pioneer School District for many years and he encouraged major restructuring through technology, innovative scheduling, and progressive staff development. I recall that after several years of putting everyone in the school community through arduous initiatives he decided that he would utilize the initial staff development day in September to celebrate successes. He designed an agenda that encouraged people to share successes and bask, however briefly, in reflection on what had been accomplished over the previous decade instead of the usual planning for what was to come next.

• Phil Composto, currently working for the New York City Board of Education, was principal of a middle school in Queens with Blanche Jimenez as his assistant principal. They invited me to conduct a day of professional development focused on the role of a teacher in a learner centered classroom. While briefing me, Phil said I would have the entire day to work with his staff except for the opening hour when he wanted the staff to celebrate. He and Blanche brought everyone into the auditorium and asked each of five different teachers, or groups of teachers, to share with the rest of the staff initiatives they had worked on during the previous year that had offered evidence of success. This set a positive tone for the rest of the day that made my work a piece of cake.

• Colleague Larry Byrd (who is to human relations what Larry Bird is to basketball) has an activity in which he asks you to list:

The child of whom you are most fond

An adult whom you value (“someone who delights you”)

Yourself

Then he asks you to list the qualities you value most in the child and adult and the qualities you hope that you have. Then he says, “Next to each quality you have listed by the name of the child and the name of the adult, place a check if you have actually told them, within the past month, that they have this quality.” Larry adds, “You must actually have said, ‘You have this quality.’ It doesn’t count if you think they already know you feel this way. You must have told them.”

After you have placed checks by each of the qualities you have validated in the child and adult whom you admire, and also placed checks by those qualities of your own that others have said you possess, Larry asks, “Would you please add up the qualities that you have checked and see if they exceed the ones you have not checked. If you have checked a majority of the qualities you feel these people have, then you are a validator. If not, you may want to think about whether you should make more of an effort to validate people – all people, not just those to whom you are closest.”

Larry concludes with this question for teachers: “If you are not validating the people you hold dearest, what chance do I have if I am the 25th student in your class?”

Larry conducted this activity in my undergraduate course at St. Lawrence University. I want to quote from the journal entries written by two of my students as they reflected on that class:

• “As I left class and walked along the campus with three friends, we talked about Mr. Byrd’s activity. Usually as soon as students leave class they forget about it. Just for us to be discussing something that happened in class is significant. When I got back to my dorm, I called my mom and dad just to tell them I love them. I called my friends and did the same.”

• “Due to our conversation with Larry Byrd, I wrote my mother an e-mail that stated the following: “Today we had a guest presenter come into one of my education classes to talk to us about the importance of relationships with others. During an activity, when asked to put down the name of an adult with whom were are very close – someone who ‘absolutely delights us’ - I put down your initials and my qualities for you were ‘loyal, caring, affectionate, funny, devoted, helpful, and warm-hearted.’ Although there are times when I may have told you that I admire your qualities, I feel like I never let you know enough. You are the one who most delights me, mom. I look up to you and everything that you are more than you will ever realize. I guess more than anything the presentation made me realize how lucky I am – I just needed you to know this!”

Validation is important to all of us – we all have the need to celebrate and reflect on what we have accomplished midst our constant quest for what lies, seemingly unattainable, ahead.

If you are an administrator and I am the 25th teacher, or aide, or bus driver on your staff, would I be validated? If you are a teacher or parent, how many people have you validated in the past week? If we don’t validate each other, what chance do our students have? As parents, what chance do our children have?

When was the last time your staff celebrated its efforts, its hard work, and its accomplishments?

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.

To qualify for the discount, this deadline is FINAL!

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) 2006, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

Pam Horton (a facilitator at our 2005 constructivist conference) is a literacy specialist who responded to my December 13 newsletter in which I cited time management skills as a major need of college students. With her permission, I am sharing her observations:

Don, I just read your article---this is a topic I have been struggling with in my work with middle and high school teachers. I absolutely agree with you that time management is a skill that needs to be "taught", but the teaching is a process.

At the college level students are there because they choose to be and are motivated to figure out this time management question. However, many of our middle and high school students don't have that intrinsic motivation nor do they have the skills necessary to successfully "figure it out".

I recently had a conversation with an 8th grade science teacher about his students preparing for a test. He told me that even though he gave his students a whole week's notice very few students studied and as a result the test grades were very low. Their homework each night was "to study". He was frustrated. I asked him why he thought his student's weren't studying. He said that for the most part they are unmotivated and don't care. I disagreed and asked if I could have a conversation with the students in his classes.

What I found out was that almost all those 8th graders had no idea what to do with five days to study--instruction was still going on in class--they didn't know how to study for old stuff while they were still learning new---they weren't really sure what to study (they had notes, text, and labs), nor did they know how to study over a longer period of time.

This situation led me to have discussions with our middle school interdisciplinary teams. The outcome? They all knew how they would study for an exam but, they weren't sure how to teach their students to study. It's really not just students that need to be taught time management and study skills, teachers need to have the strategies and skills to teach as well.

In high school I'm hearing the same complaints from teachers and I'm hearing the same song from students that I'm hearing from the middle school students---"I have a 5 page essay in English due next week, I have to make up two chem lab write-ups, and I have a government paper to write." This student didn't even know where to start---she's one of my volleyball players and practices or plays a game six out of seven days a week. Even though she had all these things due the next week, she was continuing to have daily class work and short term assignments. She needed direction, planning and options.

My point is that our students do need to become independent, but unfortunately it doesn't work just to say, "You have a test next Wednesday," or “This 5 page essay is due in two weeks." These statements need to be coupled with the specific HOWS. That involves teaching students how to use specific periods of time and what to do with that time. This needs to be built in as part of the instructional process.

The key to independence is fostering that independence which seems to be the part of the process that is often neglected. As educators we need to carefully watch for evidence that shows our students are growing as time managers and studiers. Then, we need to evaluate the supports that are no longer necessary and remove them so that our students take on independence. No easy task, but I'm not sure it's even being considered by most teachers as part of their teaching responsibilities.

Pam Horton

Pam, you’ve placed a spotlight on a major obstacle to student achievement – poor study habits and the inability to work independently. Unfortunately, so many of us are focused on teaching the content that is valued on standardized assessments that we ignore the longer range view that training teachers to teach for independent study habits may contribute to higher student achievement on standardized tests.

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.

To qualify for the discount, this deadline is FINAL!

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) 2006, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.