Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Season's Greetings


Before we go off for our winter holidays, I would like to share how grateful I am to be part of the Squamish Elementary School community.  I have taught in nine schools in the past twenty years: in Vancouver, Richmond,  at HSSS, Mamquam, Brackendale, and this is my fourth year at Squamish.  In my experience, I have never encountered such  affectionate, caring students as we have at this school.  Their parents have obviously done a great job of teaching and guiding them and for this we are all most appreciative.

I am also thankful for the adults I work with:  the teachers, the teaching assistants, the counsellors, the custodians, bus drivers, maintenance folks, and of course, my trusty secretary, Mrs. Morfini.

We live in an amazing place.  From my office window, I  marvel at the magnificence of the Chief know that I have the best view in the whole district.  But it is not for this reason that other principals should be envious.  I also have the best students, parents and colleagues one could wish for.

Thank you, everyone, Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Feedback, Please

Think about a time in your adult life when you were learning something new.  (I think about learning to drive a stick shift at the age of 40.)  Chances are, you had a teacher or coach who was helping you in your learning.  How did they help you?  Were they encouraging and supportive?  Did they offer suggestions and feedback  for how to improve?  Were they patient and kind?  And - did they give you a mark or a letter grade during or after your learning experiences, and was that helpful to you?  Chances are, you did not get a score out of ten, you did not get marks taken off (every time you stalled the car), and you were not penalized because it took you longer to learn than your neighbour.  Nor were your attempts averaged.  Imagine taking your driver's test:  you fail miserably the first time, but practice and practice, and pass on your second attempt.  But the instructor says, "Sorry - the average of your two scores was below 50% so you still fail."

Does that make sense?

We are not sure that some of our grading practices in schools make much sense, either.  A colleague recently shared this article with me.


Blog post by Joe Bower, a teacher in Alberta

for the love of learning

Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation.
Grades and the fear of failure
In a study that appeared in the Journal of Educational Psychology (August 2011), Caroline Pulfrey et al., took Swiss students who were in their upper teens and mid twenties from an English as a foreign language class and asked them to do assignments that involved listening and comprehending.

There were 3 experiments.

In the first experiment, one group of students were told that they would receive a grade for their learning while the other group was told they would not receive a grade. In the second experiment, on a single assignment students either received only a grade, only a comment, or a grade and a comment. The third experiment was similar to the second experiment, but this time the students received their respective feedback and completed a second assignment.

Together these three experiments revealed that the anticipation of a grade, as opposed to no feedback or a comment, increases performance avoidance, a fear of failure and a loss of interest. It's important to note that this was true of both high and low achieving students. While conventional wisdom might tell us that grading should inspire learners to do their best, this is not what the research is telling us.

Common sense might also convince us to adopt a "more the merrier" kind of attitude towards providing students with both a comment and a grade, but again, research shows that the presence of a grade (with or without a comment) is responsible for lower levels of motivation, a loss of interest for learning, and a preference for easier tasks. 
Unfortunately, the positive benefits of a formative comment is overshadowed by the negative effects of the grade. 

All this supports Ruth Butler's (1988) research from twenty years ago that grades and grades with a comment are responsible for lower levels of intrinsic motivation for learning.

If you are looking to increase a child's anxiety, desire to escape and fear of failure, or decrease their intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy then it makes perfect sense to grade students.

However, if you are interested in helping children learn, you might want to consider leaving the grade out and only providing them with the formative comments they need to improve.


I think it is time to have a conversation about assessment practices and how we might bring them (and ourselves) into the 21st century.

Monday, November 28, 2011

MindUp!

One thing I know for sure: if children feel calm and safe, they will learn more and retain it longer.

I heard about the MindUp program a few years ago when the Vancouver School Board began offering training for teachers.  MindUp comes from the Hahn Foundation, whose founder, Goldie, wanted to find a a way to help children gain "the skills they need to live smarter, healthier, and happier lives."  She worked with smart, Canadian researchers and educators to prepare a program for kindergarten to grade eight.  A few of my friends from Valleycliffe went to be trained and I was most envious. Finally, last July, I got into a training session and came away with a new appreciation for how we can help even the squirreliest of kids calm their minds and prepare to engage.

MindUp is a research-based series of 15 lessons that teach students about their brain and how it works.  They learn that the prefrontal cortex is like a wise leader, that the hippocampus is the keeper of memories, and that the amygdala is the brain's security guard.  When a person is stressed or fearful, the amygdala is alerted (fight,  flight, or freeze).  It blocks higher level thinking and good decision-making.
Students learn that they can calm the amygdala with measured breathing and focused awareness.

In MindUp the students learn about their senses.  They become better at filtering-out sensory information that is distracting and takes away from attention to learning.  We know that professional athletes, musicians, artists and other "focused" people have trained their minds in this way, in order to succeed in their professions.

Optimism and altruism are the topics of the final six lessons in MindUp.  The happy brain is a brain that  is primed for learning.  Research has shown that "the dopamine pleasure surge is highest when students are fully engaged with their learning ...with an overall sense of well-being." 



I've been teaching MindUp in two classes for the past month or so.  The other day, a kindergarten student told me about something responsible he had done, cleaning up a mess that was not his.  I said, "Thank you so much!  That was very thoughtful."  He ran away but five seconds later he was back.  He said, "My prefrontal cortex told me to do it!'  That's great, I thought.  My work is done!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

A Snow Day at School

Yesterday it snowed and snowed until about noon.  It was perfect packing snow and the students made the most amazing snowforts.  Some of the snowballs they rolled were as big as them and it took two or three kids to maneuver them.  What impressed me most was how everyone was fully engaged.  Some were working so hard they had to take their coats off.  There was lots of conversation, group problem-solving and distributed leadership.  There were a few conflicts, but they were sorted out with minimal adult support.  It exemplified what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a "state of flow" - in which work feels like play and time seems to pass unnoticed.  In snowfort building I think, there is just enough ease, just enough challenge, and much room for creativity. I could not help wondering:  what if we could more often create the conditions for flow in the building?  We glimpse it sometimes, and treasure those occasions.  These are the times that I think children will remember, too, when they look back on their years at school.







Monday, November 21, 2011

Education for the 21st Century

We have known for a while that Big Changes in Education are imminent.  Our children are digital natives.  They have never used a rotary phone, a typewriter, watched black and white tv, or known life without computers.  They can multitask in ways that make us dizzy.  They communicate with their peers through texting and instant messaging and Facebook.  Remember when our parents told us to, "Get off the phone!"  In an age in which we can look up any fact we need online, what is the purpose of school? 
This is the question I would like to discuss in this blog.  We, as teachers, want school to be relevant and engaging for learners.  We want to be able to coach students to use technology wisely and ethically and we wonder how this is possible when they are more savvy than we are!  The world is changing so rapidly and how well we are able to adapt will be the test of our resiliency as educators.
So please read and respond.  Join a conversation about how to make school still matter.