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• Dabbling.
• Doing old things in old ways.
• Doing old things in new ways.
• Doing new things in new ways.

Labels: education

• Become an Explorer with Students
  Step off the soapbox, tone down that direct teaching, and become wondrous and inquisitive right along side your students. Take a break from what you are expert at and delve into unknown territory with new content, activities, or a concept. Here are ways to get started:
  Begin and end a lesson, unit, or project with an essential question or two. These are overarching, open-ended questions that do not have a definitive answer -- for example, "How am I connected to those in the past?" Essential questions are also open ended, highly subjective, and often provocative. (Read education researcher Grant Wiggins's descriptions and examples of essential questions.)
• Take every opportunity to express to your students that you have no idea about an answer, even if you have to fake it a little. (Teaching is part theater, after all). Show them that you are equally puzzled. Model inquiry by using the think-aloud strategy as you do a class reading of a current science article, or a poem, or as you collectively admire a painting from the Harlem Renaissance.
• Dwindle down those teacher sentences that start with "This means" and replace them with, "I wonder," "What if," and "How might?" And, most importantly, begin asking your students this crucial question often, even multiple times in a day: "What do you think?" (For help in framing open-ended questions and exploratory classroom language, try this book.)
• Give students plenty of think time. When you stop rushing, students may seem a bit shocked and may even believe it to be some sort of trick or hidden tactic. Wait, push that Pause button, and count the seconds -- whatever it takes. Can you say "uncomfortable"? Students are not accustomed to this exaggerated amount of time, but studies show that giving students an added handful of seconds after a question can reap much richer responses.
• Be mindful of your tone. Try replacing a flat, authoritative, expert-sounding one with -- and this might sound corny -- a singsong intonation, the one we use when we are whimsically curious.
• Make your classroom a place of wonderment. When a student asks a question that provokes a discussion, elicits a slew of fiery rebuttals, or brings about even more questions, give her a sticky note to write the question and her name on and put it on display, maybe on the "Questions That Rock" wall.

(All of the above suggestions are also sure to help lower the affective filter of the struggling students in your classroom.)

A Constructivist Classroom

For those out there already forming a response to this post about the woes of constructivist teaching methods, I'd like to point out a few things:

Teachers are known control freaks. We have to be. Anyone who is not a teacher out there, try to summon the attention of 32 seventh graders the day after Halloween and loads of candy, or teach a lesson on how to properly format a bibliography page to a group of students two weeks before high school graduation. What I'm proposing is that you channel all that controlling energy and put it at the beginning and end of a lesson.

This means that you do indeed have goals and objectives solidified in your mind and in your lesson-planning books. With clear objectives (the beginning) and enriching, rigorous assessments (the end) decided on and designed, constructivism just proposes you do something different in the middle.

You know the saying "The devil is in the details"? Well, the devil is also in the misunderstood. This method of teaching sometimes gets a bad rap because learning objectives and assessments are flimsy, or even missing.

How about it? Step down, stand next to students, and take a journey. You are still leading the pack, just relaxing your grip.

Down with Drill and Kill

You will start to see students slowly -- often painfully so, at first -- begin to become questioners and openly, vulnerably curious. The almost robotic, knee-jerk quest for the correct answers will begin to vaporize from your classroom.

And, students will see questioning out loud as not so much an admittance of not having the right answers as a declaration that they are admirably curious -- a learner, full of ideas, hypotheses, and reflections. They will begin to see that they -- just like their teacher -- are explorers of knowledge and ideas.

Labels: education

• Teach students to think of their brain as a muscle that strengthens with use, and have them visualize the brain forming new connections every time they learn.
• When they teach study skills, convey to students that using these methods will help their brains learn better.
• Discourage use of labels ("smart," "dumb," and so on) that convey intelligence as a fixed entity.
• Praise students' effort, strategies, and progress, not their intelligence. Praising intelligence leads to students to fear challenges and makes them feel stupid and discouraged when they have difficulty.
• Give students challenging work. Teach them that challenging activities are fun and that mistakes help them learn.

I also asked Dweck to comment on implications for policy makers and education policies that would support this kind of teaching. "Teachers themselves should be seen as capable of growth and development, and policy makers should support teachers' efforts to grow," she says. "Teachers should also receive within-school mentoring in areas in which they are weak. The idea should be that all teachers have strengths and weaknesses, but that all can develop their skills in weaker areas.

"Teachers should also be rewarded for motivating love of learning and improvement in low-achievement students, not simply playing to children who are already high achievers," Dweck adds. "Teachers whose students improved most in our workshops were those who devoted extra time to students who asked for help. Teachers need the time and leeway to devote this kind of attention to their students.

"Finally, this kind of teaching is about learning," she says. "American curricula often try to jam too many different topics into each year. For example, American high schools try to teach fifty to sixty science topics per year, as opposed to nine in Japanese schools. To show students how to learn and how to appreciate the growth in their understanding, we need more depth in what we teach them."

I asked Dweck to comment on the role of technology in helping children express their intelligences. "Because our workshop was so successful," she says, "we obtained funding to develop a computer-based version called Brainology. It consists of six modules teaching study skills and teaching about the brain. In the module on the brain, students visited a brain lab and did virtual experiments."

"For example, they could see how the brain formed new connections as it learned," she continues. "Throughout the modules, they saw online interviews with other students their age, kept an online journal, advised animated student characters how to study, and took mastery tests on the material at the end of each module.

"We pilot tested this program in twenty New York City schools with considerable success," Dweck adds. "We are still analyzing the achievement data, but virtually every student reported that they changed their mental model of learning and were doing new things to make their brains learn better, learn more, and make new connections. We are now attempting to revise the program and upgrade the technology to make it ready for wider distribution."

It is striking how closely Dweck's findings mirror GLEF's agenda for redesigning schools, which we have published as our "Big Ideas for Better Schools: Ten Ways to Improve Education." It is our belief that project-based learning, the first of those ideas, is the best approach to designing challenging and engaging curriculum.

The teacher behaviors Dweck recommends are frequently seen and described in our articles, videos, and multimedia, depicting teachers setting high expectations for all students, with resulting high achievement for students of all backgrounds. In Learning by Design, our documentary on the Build SF Institute, for example, architects and teachers are seen pushing students to improve their building designs and requiring greater effort and persistence.

Our work on ongoing teacher development also emphasizes policies that provide more time for teacher collaboration and focus on student work, as well as more support for teacher mentoring. Our Edutopia magazine column Ask Ellen, written by Ellen Moir, executive director of the New Teacher Center, at the University of California at Santa Cruz, also highlights these practices and policies. And Dweck's Brainology software illustrates our belief that technology can help students visualize relationships and connect with other students.

I hope more educators, parents, and, especially, policy makers will take Dweck's research to heart. In this time when the U.S. Department of Education advocates "scientifically based research," here's research that is both scientific and significant.

Milton Chen is executive director of The George Lucas Educational Foundation.
This article originally published on 3/16/2007

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• Avoid being a “GPA protector.” Don’t play it safe by enrolling in easy classes. An effortless “A” is not as impressive as a hard-earned “B” or “C.” Taking challenging classes throughout high school — including senior year — shows the people reading your application that you’re serious about your education and that you’re ready to thrive in college.
• Plan ahead. Working with your guidance counselor, come up with a long-term plan to help you meet your college goals. Choices you make early in your high school career may affect your ability to enroll in classes later on that could make you a stronger candidate for college admissions.
• Don’t be deterred by one bad grade. Colleges understand if you have one grade that’s not reflective of your usual ability. Don’t stress. Refocus and work hard. What’s important is that you’re able to demonstrate that you’re getting back on track.
• Ask questions. As soon as you have decided where you want to apply, get in touch with the admissions offices and find out exactly what types of courses they value most. For most (including Holy Cross) it will be English, math, science, language and history, but some — particularly those with a specialized focus like music — may place greater emphasis on high school performing arts classes.
• Remember, every high school is different. They may seem similar, but the curricula of high schools vary widely. Some have a very rigid class structure, while others may not even offer honors or A.P. classes. Not to worry. You won’t be penalized. College admissions officers will take the time to understand the curriculum of your school.
• Beware of “urban legends.” As alluded to above, it’s dangerous to compare yourself to others in different high schools who have a similar G.P.A. or class rank and assume you’ll get accepted or rejected based on their experiences. Colleges evaluate students within the context of their high school, taking into account differences in grading scales, class size, course offerings and historical data.
  

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