THE INSTITUTE for Learning Centered Education NEWSLETTER
TOPIC: The Importance of MODELING
(or, Practicing what we Preach by Not Preaching It)
I attended a
conference, ten years ago, and spent two days listening to lectures on the need
for teachers to be interactive in the classroom. We were told to utilize
cooperative learning strategies and we were told not to make the learner a
passive recipient of information.
Think about it: The strategy we were
instructed not to use in the classroom (lecture) was the primary strategy
modeled for us throughout our two days at the workshop.
I challenge you,
no matter what your role in the field of education, to think about these
questions:
If you are an administrator, do the workshops you offer for
teachers model the strategies that teachers need to employ in a standards
focused classroom? Or, are teachers asked to be passive recipients of
knowledge?
Are your staff meetings conducted as you would like teachers
to conduct classrooms?
If you are a consultant or a staff developer, do
your workshops for Boards of Education and administrators, model the strategies
you want these people to encourage their teachers to utilize?
If you are
in the State Education Department, do most of the conferences and meetings you
sponsor model the strategies the department is encouraging teachers to use in
the classroom?
How many workshops either sponsored by State Ed., planned
by administrators, or run by staff developers, begin by listing the standards
and indicators they want met by the end of the workshop? Is this far fetched? If
teachers should have specific standards and indicators in mind when they teach a
lesson, shouldn’t conference and workshop and meeting planners do the same
thing? Wouldn’t it help us all to learn how to use standards and indicators in
the classroom, if we saw standards and indicators listed for workshops we
attended?
What I am suggesting is difficult. I realize it is not easy to
model, at a conference, the strategies we want teachers to use in the
classroom.
When I attended the two days of lectures, ten years ago, I
respected the workshop presenters. I did not come away critical of them for not
modeling the cooperative learning practices they were encouraging. I came away
recognizing that if these excellent presenters had to lecture on the need to be
interactive in the classroom, it must be damned difficult to model
it.
But we must move in that direction. We learn through being
immersed in the content we are expected to understand.
The point is
finally being accepted (slowly) that the skills and strategies needed for a
standards-based approach to student learning are not acquired, by a teacher,
through participation in a one, two or three day workshop. A teacher may be
excellent, but if he/she excels at lecturing, it is not easy to become
proficient with portfolios, cooperative learning, journals, reflective
practices, parental involvement, addressing the needs of students with
disabilities, or any of the other strategies that are required of a teacher who
truly wants to address new State standards.
Ask any teacher who has
gained proficiency with even one of the strategies referred to above, and they
will tell you it was a multi-year journey of trial and error, workshops,
collegial dialogue and research before they became comfortable with their
ability to use the strategy with any degree of frequency.
We must
recognize that nothing complex is learned at one lecture, in one sitting, at one
workshop, or as the result of any single factor. If you are proficient at any of
the aforementioned inter-active teaching strategies, chances are you would have
difficulty citing all of the experiences that added up to the point at which you
felt self confident with that strategy.
One of the best ways to augment
the learning of all of us who are engaged in education reform is to immerse us
in environments where we can observe (through modeling) the concepts and
strategies we are expected to adopt.
We will expedite the process
of creating standards-focused classrooms if every meeting, every conference, and
every workshop we attend highlights the standards and indicators to be
addressed, and models the teaching strategies that we want utilized in our
classrooms.
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.
______________________________________________________
THE INSTITUTE for Learning Centered Education NEWSLETTER
TOPIC: EFFECTIVE
ADMINISTRATORS
observed.
Pat Flynn and I taped a two-hour meeting of the
committee at Maple Avenue School, Niagara Falls, in 1993. It was impressive to
observe the interaction of every member of the committee (parents, teachers,
community representative, business representative, and support staff). Most
were active participants, much was accomplished, and everyone felt good about
the meeting.
The principal, Susan Farley, spoke only a few times. When
she spoke it was for less than 30 seconds and usually to ask a question. (i.e.
"Do you think if we held that on a Wednesday evening, parents would turn out?"
she might ask. Or, "If I could obtain $200 funding, how many of you would be
willing to work with me on it?")
At the end of the meeting, we
interviewed each of the 12-committee
members separately and asked them what
brought about the success of the committee. Each person cited the leadership
role of the principal as one of the two or three major reasons.
Susan
Farley was neither autocratic nor domineering. Yet, she was
influential,
generated support for her initiatives and was credited for
her leadership
even though she spoke infrequently.
As principal, she modeled the inquiry
based approach toward teaching and
learning.
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.
_____________________________________________________________
THE INSTITUTE for Learning Centered Education NEWSLETTER
TOPIC: Professional Development
Plan
As you may know, New York State is requiring every
district to design a Professional Development Plan (PDP).
In this
Newsletter, I shall:
A. Propose use of a good rubric to assess
PDP’s.
B. Propose criteria for the State to apply in reviewing
PDP’s.
C. Cite research in support of the criteria I am
proposing.
A. Create A Good Rubric/Build in
Accountability
How the State holds districts accountable for their
Professional Development Plans (PDP’s) will go a long way toward determining how
soon goals are met for raising student achievement standards.
Can the
State establish criteria (a rubric) for professional development plans that
guide districts into professional development supported by the latest research
findings? Or will districts, still operating in the old paradigm, turn out plans
that reflect what they’ve always done?
The requirement of a Professional
Development Plan is an excellent concept. However, many districts will design
old paradigm plans because that is all they know. Just as the computer can act
only on the basis of information fed into it (ie. garbage in, garbage out), a
PDP can be only as progressive as the ideas of the people designing
it.
Will the State be able to devise an accountability system that will
work and can be implemented with resources available?
As a first step, I
suggest there be a well-publicized rubric, which will be used to assess all
PDP’s. It should not be possible for a PDP to meet the criteria on this rubric
without providing strategies for professional development, which are
research-based examples of best practice.
I would also suggest that it is
difficult for me to see a PDP being successful if it doesn’t define strategies
for having every staff member create an IEP for his/her own professional
development, complete with benchmarks for assessing progress. Every good teacher
has a plan for student learning and a method of assessing student progress. Why
shouldn't there be a plan for an individual teacher’s professional growth and a
method of assessing progress?
Does this sound difficult to accomplish? It
is. But it’s also difficult to accomplish the kind of education reform the State
wishes to achieve. We cannot expect to accomplish dramatic education reform
while attempting undramatic strategies to bring this
about.
B. Criteria for Assessing Professional Development
Plans
Here are the criteria I propose be applied by the State in
reviewing PDP’s. These criteria should be incorporated into a rubric that should
be made available to districts immediately. Each district submitting a PDP
should be required to explain how its plan addresses each of these
criteria:
1. Will the Professional Development Plan engage teachers as
active learners rather than as passive recipients of knowledge?
2. Will
the PDP model the 12 strategies recommended by Brooks and Brooks in “The Case
for Constructivist Classrooms?”
3.Will there be a wide array of
learning opportunities that engage staff in experiencing, creating and solving
real problems, using their own experiences, and working with others?
4.
Will the staff development involve teachers both as learners and as teachers and
allow them to struggle with the uncertainties that accompany each
role?
5. Will teachers be encouraged to learn by doing, reading, and
reflecting (just as students do); by collaborating with other teachers; by
looking closely at students and their work; and by sharing what they see? (This
kind of learning enables teachers to make the leap from theory to accomplished
practice.)
6. Will there be flexible systems of professional development,
which meet the learners (educators) where they are in the change
process?
7. Will the PDP allow for coherent long-range learning,
focused on student needs? Is it embedded in the job and closely related to both
student and teacher needs, with teachers taking an active role in their own
growth, with and without experts? are teachers and administrators active makers
of their own learning? (These are among nine “Needed Changes in Professional
Development,” cited by Giselle Martin-Kniep in an excerpt from a workbook
utilized in her training for the New York State Education Department, (adapted
from Sparks, 1995; Little, 1993; and Sykes, 1996). How many districts offer
Professional Development that is aligned with the changes proposed by Dr.
Kniep?
8. Does the PDP address the role of the administration and
Board, and the need for these people to align district policies in support of
the PDP?
C. Cite the researchers whose writings support the criteria I
have proposed.
Following are just a few of the many citations available
to support the kinds of criteria I have listed above. Please note that some of
the people whose research supports the criteria I have listed are people who
have been heavily relied on by New York State in its education reform
efforts.
KAPPAN, April, 1995: "Policies that Support Professional
Development In an Era of Reform," by Linda Darling-Hammond and Milbrey W.
McLaughlin
EDUCATION WEEK: March 16, 1994 - "A Paradigm Shift in Staff
Development."
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP, September, 1989: "The End
of an Era of Staff Development," by Linda Lambert
KAPPAN: April, 1995,
"Practices That Support Teacher Development," by Ann Lieberman, Co-Director,
NCREST.
KAPPAN , April, 1995, “Policies that Support Professional
Development in an Era of Reform.” by Linda Darling-Hammond and Milbrey W.
McLaughlin
Fullan & Hargraves, 1991; Hall & Loucks-Horsley,
1978).
“Needed Changes in Professional Development,” Giselle Martin
Kniep, (adapted from Sparks, 1995; Little, 1993; and Sykes, 1996) in a
training manual for New York State educators, 1998
"Teachers Teaching
Teachers," by Nancy Barnes of the New School in NYC, Education Week, March,
2000
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.
________________________________________________________________
THE INSTITUTE for Learning Centered Education NEWSLETTER
TOPIC: Facilitating Students as
Independent Learners
For teachers, here is a simple
activity, which will guide you toward encouraging students to be independent
learners?
For administrators and staff developers, here is a good
workshop activity to focus participants on how to encourage students to be
responsible for their own learning?
Read on:
In Newsletter Issue
#10, we focused on eight descriptors of a learner centered classroom which had
been designed by teachers and facilitators in our Targeted grant “Pilot
Project.” We’ve received more
favorable response (and requests for these descriptors) than to any other
newsletter.
Now, with the inspiration of consultant/retired
superintendent Jim Waterson, we have a terrific companion piece to the
descriptors, along with an activity to propose.
Recently we met for
Reflective Dialogue with six of our pilot teachers. It occurred to us that a
learner-centered environment is important as a vehicle for student learning, but
is not an end in itself.
Why do we want teachers to create
learner-centered environments?
A learner-centered environment provides
opportunities for students to become independent learners - to take
responsibility for their own learning.
Students who take responsibility
for their own learning are more likely to achieve higher standards.
But
what does it look like when students are taking responsibility for their own
learning? We realized we needed to define our terms.
Thus was born the
Independent Learner activity:
Jim Waterson stepped to the front of the
room and wrote “Independent” on the newsprint and put a circle around it. He
asked the teachers to share words that define “independent”. (“What are the
attributes or characteristics of a person who is independent?” Jim asked.)
Then he wrote the
word “Learner” and drew a circle around it. Again, we each shared words that
define the characteristics of someone who is a “learner,” as Jim drew lines from
the circle and wrote each word that was brain stormed.
The attributes of
someone who is “independent,” combined with the attributes of a “learner”
provided a pretty good description of someone who takes responsibility for
his/her own learning.
We then suggested that the role of a good teacher
“is to create opportunities for students to demonstrate the characteristics of
an independent learner.”
Now, here is how the graphic created by the
Independent Learner activity (above) converges with the eight descriptors of a
learner centered environment (see newsletter #10): when you define “Independent
Learner”, you are defining a goal of classroom instruction. The eight
descriptors of a learner centered classroom guide the teacher toward the kind of
environment that will enable a student to demonstrate the characteristics of an
independent learner.
As a teacher, you may want to review the
characteristics of an independent learner and ask yourself “Am I providing my
students with sufficient opportunities to demonstrate these
characteristics?
If you are unsure, look at the list of eight
descriptors of a learning centered classroom and see how many of those
descriptors you address with your daily teaching strategies.
As a staff
developer, I am now finding infinite ways to focus teachers on classroom
practice by having them define “Independent Learner,” reflect on the descriptors
of a learner centered classroom, and then ask themselves “Are my teaching
strategies enabling students to take responsibility for their own learning? Am I
creating a learner centered
classroom?”
**********************************************************
If
you want to see the characteristics of an independent learner cited by our pilot
teachers, read on.
However, you might want to create your own list of
characteristics of someone who is “independent” and someone who is a “learner,”
before you review the list from our pilot teachers.
Here is the list of
characteristics of someone who is “independent,” as generated from six of our pilot
teachers:
Characteristics of someone who is a “learner” :
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.
_______________________________________________________________
THE INSTITUTE for Learning Centered Education NEWSLETTER
TOPIC: TEACHING
STRATEGIES
Have you seen the learning cone that indicates we learn
most when we teach others?
If you give credence to this concept,
shouldn’t it challenge teachers and staff developers to focus on ways to get
people to teach others that which we want them to learn?
Here are some
strategies, which can be used in a classroom or workshop setting, with
kindergarten children or adults. Keep this in mind as you read through these
strategies: each of these can be adapted to any grade level, discipline or staff
development workshop:
The Pyramiding
Process
I am indebted to Jan Peters of Gouverneur (middle school
social studies) for sharing this strategy. Jan and Art teacher Dale Streeter
brought two students to a full day training session sponsored under our Targeted
grant for the purpose of increasing teacher and student computer literacy.
As a social studies teacher, Jan also wanted to have her students address
standards in that discipline.
Here is how Jan describes the activity she
generated from this initial day of training:
“We spent about two hours
learning PowerPoint. When we returned to school the next day, the two students
(boys) taught the program to two of the girls in our class (43 minutes). On the
following day, the four students taught four more (43 minutes). Then, the next
day, the eight “experts” taught the rest of the class (43 minutes). On the next
day, 20 of my 23 students each prepared a slide presentation (six to 12 slides)
on one of the events leading up to the Revolutionary War. (One student was
absent, one was called out for a CSE conference, and one student who only saved
two slides accounts for the three students who didn't complete the
assignment.)
The following week, we had a town meeting in class where
students took on the roles of patriots, neutrals, and loyalists. We used the
students' PowerPoint shows as discussion prompts.
Note - One student who
is very distractible and seldom successful, included letters in his presentation
that not only "flew" into his slides, but changed color when they landed on the
screen. None of the rest of us knew how to do this. (He had been a
part of the group of eight trainees.) When I praised this in class on
Monday and asked him how he did it, he replied, "Oh, it was easy. I'll
show you how, sometime."
Jan used this process to focus on teaching
students PowerPoint and to address content standards related to the
Revolutionary War. However, this pyramiding process could have been used to
address standards in any discipline, with or without including technology as one
of the standards.
2. Pal Tag
Designed by
Becky Buckingham (Lisbon) and Karen Cook (Massena), both biology
teachers.
This activity addresses standards in technology and biology. As
you will see, this same process could be used to address standards in any
discipline along with technology.
PURPOSE:
Massena students will
review ecology;
Lisbon students will learn taxonomy/biotic relationships
including predator/prey symbiosis.
Students in both schools will
demonstrate competence with e-mails and related technology.
Here’s how
Pal Tag works:
Students will look for articles on current events or
listen to the news and summarize information relating to the topics being
studied.
Then, one student, Tom, from Massena, prepares a brief
description of himself and, along with his summary from the news, he sends an
e-mail to a counterpart in Lisbon. The counterpart then sends a self description
and news summary back to Tom. Tom now shows Jane, another student in his
Massena class, how to use the e-mail and Jane then sends her description and
news summary to another student in Lisbon. Each day, one student in each school
sends a description and news summary to the other district until everyone in the
class has been taught to use the e-mail, has taught another student how to use
the e-mail, and has researched and sent a description and news summary to a
student in the other school.
As a culminating event, the two classes of
students will meet at the Beach in June for a day of biology related activities
designed by the students within a structure created by the teachers. (The agenda
for the culminating event is available upon request.)
3. Parent Homework
Designed by Mercedes
Murray, ELA, John Marshall HS, Rochester
Ninth grade students complete a
writing assignment. Then they are asked to give the same assignment to an adult
and to collect and correct it.
Mercedes reports that this activity is
successfully involving an increasing number of parents (or other adults
significant in the students’ lives).
4. The
Jigsaw
Less than 10 percent of teachers at workshops I conduct
indicate familiarity with a jigsaw, yet it is one of the best activities for
generating student learning by having students teach students. It is the
activity I rely on most frequently at teacher/administrator/parent
workshops.
Very often if you ask yourself, “How can I get others to teach
that which I want them to learn,” the answer is “A Jigsaw.”
At a two day
workshop for the Far West Teachers Center, two years ago, a science teacher
announced at the start of the second day: “Until last night I had never heard of
a Jigsaw. Today, I tried it for the first time and I’ve never seen so much
learning occur in such a short period of time.”
The jigsaw can be adapted
to any grade level and any discipline. Here are two examples:
Example
One:
ELA:
Class is put into “home groups” - six groups of four
students each. Students are asked to select from four options:
A page of
biographical information on Ernest Hemingway
A page of biographical
information on Shakespeare
A page of analysis of “The Sun Also
Rises.”
A page of analysis of “Macbeth.”
There are a couple of
guided questions at the end of each page to suggest what information the
students will need to prepare.
Each of the four students in each “Home
Group” selects one of the four options.
New groups, of six are
formed, by grouping the person from each “Home Group” who selected the
biographical page on Hemingway into the same “Expert” group. The people who
selected each of the other three options are grouped into “expert” groups with
others who selected the same option.
The new “expert” groups are afforded
time (perhaps 15 or 20 minutes) to prepare responses to the “Guiding Questions.”
Then they return to their home groups and each person, in turn, shares the
relevant information.
If the jigsaw is used simply as an exploratory
activity, at the start of a unit, you may want to end it here, or you may end it
at this point if it was used as review prior to an exam.
If the jigsaw is
used as a primary learning tool, you may want to announce, in advance, that
students will be tested, individually, after the jigsaw. Or, if you are
concerned about accountability, you can build in another step (ie. “After the
jig saw, each person will write a brief report summarizing each of the two
authors and each of the two plays based on the information you learned in the
jigsaw”.)
Or, you can find other creative ways to have the students “Use”
the information that will be shared in the jigsaw. How well we listen (to a
teacher lecture or a student report in a jigsaw) depends on how we think we will
need to use the information afterwards. That is why it is important for students
to know the purpose of the jigsaw and what, if anything, will happen
afterward.
Example 2:
Kindergarten or Grade 1 or
2:
Students are put in four home groups of five students in each group.
Each student is asked to select one of five stories to read or to
hear:
The choices might include Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella,
The Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, or The Emperor’s New
Clothes.
Then the students are regrouped to be with the person in each
other group who selected the same story. These new groups are called the
“expert” groups.
Each “expert” group reads, or is read to, the story it
has selected. Then the students rejoin their “home” groups and each, in turn,
tells the story he/she has read or heard.
For older students the jigsaw
can be set up with a reading or tape viewing assignment as homework to prepare
for the sharing. The amount of time allowed for the “Expert” group to prepare,
or for the “Home” group to share can vary from a few minutes to an hour or
longer depending on the complexity of the task. In other words, an entire jigsaw
can be completed in half an hour (which I frequently do at workshops) or it can
last for an hour or two.
At workshops I will frequently mix a reading or
two with viewing videos to set up a jigsaw. These way participants have options
that can be desirable to audio or visual learners.
5. The Carousel
I find that approximately
3 percent of the teachers at my workshops indicate they have ever heard of a
“Carousel.” The Carousel can be used for many of the same content pieces that
can be incorporated into a jigsaw. Whether I use a carousel or jigsaw may depend
on timing and pace. The Carousel is great after a meal when people are lethargic
and you want to change the pace, or at anytime when you want to get people up
and moving.
Place six sheets of newsprint around the room with space
around each one (or it could be four or five, or seven, or eight sheets of
newsprint depending on the size of the group and nature of the content). You
want people in groups of three, if possible, but no more than four or
five.
If this were social studies, you might write on top of one sheet of
newsprint:
Causes of the Civil War
On other sheets might be
written:
Battles of the Civil War
Northern
Generals
Southern Generals
Post Civil War
Activities
Southern States
Northern States
Put a different
group (three to five) at each newsprint and give one person a marker. Allow
about two minutes (or until every group has recorded at least one thought) and
then announce, “Finish up the idea you are writing and move to the next sheet of
newsprint.”
Allow about a minute and a half and rotate people again. Each
group continues the list started by the previous groups.
At the end, ask
everyone to revisit the sheets they filled in earlier. Finally, process out the
activity.
This can be used as an exploratory activity - it gives the
teacher (or workshop director) a chance to see what prior knowledge exists in a
non-threatening way (because while you will observe individual levels of
understanding, no one is on the spot to answer a question from you,
individually). It is also an excellent activity for review or for learning
material (cooperatively) during a unit or lesson.
For an added tweak,
bring a cassette recorder and play music. Stop the music every time it is time
to move to another sheet of newsprint.
Staff Developers, here is an
example of Carousel topics for a workshop for teachers:
Here is another carousel that may be good at the end of a workshop:
I like this Carousel for the following reasons:
1. It gives valuable feedback.
2. It demonstrates to the participants that we want to know what resources they will need to accomplish their work and it demonstrates that we recognize they may require additional resources.
3. It is effective near the close of a workshop when people may be tired of sitting and would be responsive to an activity that allows them to move around.
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.