What's Become Clear

There is a growing conversation about the need for national standards. But do we need national standards? And what if they pick the wrong standards? I just finished Howard Gardner’s new book, Five Minds For The Future, and as always Dr. Gardner did a wonderful job. But, everything Dr. Gardner talked about, in terms of preparing high school kids, was aimed at preparing them for college. And the vast majority of our kids will not attend a four-year college and complete a degree.

In fact, only about 25% of our population ever finishes a bachelors degree. And, as I’ve stated before, more than 75% of our population will engage in work as adults that does not require a college degree. Less than a third of recent graduates at the University of Kansas obtained employment that required the degree they earned while at the University of Kansas.

So when we talk about national standards I can guarantee you that they will be designed to prepare every student to be admitted to a four-year liberal arts college. That’s problem number one. Problem number two is our students, in the 21st century, see those standards as boring and irrelevant.

Ask anyone, “If you ask high school kids to describe school in one word, what word would they choose?” The answer is almost universal, boring.

But we continue down this path as if establishing national standards that everyone has to follow will magically transform our students into highly engaged, well-educated, productive 21st-century citizens. It’s not going to happen.

We should be running 50 different experiments, one in each state, to see how best to prepare our students for the 21st century. How much evidence do we have to compile that centrally controlled bureaucracies are inefficient and ineffective before we unshackle schools to do its best for kids? -  Steve Wyckoff

Rural schools may be an endangered species. I’ve written many times that I believe that our model in public schools for educating kids is obsolete.  I’ve also written that our goals in public schools are also all wrong. But if we are going to persist in that model then it will take a great deal more money in order to succeed. Unfortunately, especially for rural schools, we are in an era of declining revenue sources not increasing revenue sources.

So what do I see happening? The very existence of many rural schools is being threatened.  You can do the math. In the current model you have a minimum number of teachers necessary to maintain the system regardless of how few kids you have. You must have a teacher in each of the core curriculum areas and also teachers in the areas where students are required to earn credits.

There seems to be a minimum of about 10 professionals in a building to maintain it as a high school in the current system. With budget cuts many rural schools are approaching the point where, based on student enrollment and budgets per-pupil, they can’t afford the number of teachers necessary to cover all the required areas.

So consolidation becomes the default solution. But in many rural areas consolidation may mean closing schools and sending kids to neighboring towns. Unfortunately, those trips to neighboring towns may mean that kids are on a bus more than an hour one way. For the little kids this is unsatisfactory. For the older kids, many of whom are involved in extra curricular activities, there are a plethora of issues with sending kids that far.

But is there another solution to the problem? I think there is. But it will require us to take a very different approach to how we educate kids. It will require us also to change the mental models that students, parents, citizens, and educators have about how schools should look and operate. And I think the solution will lead to more highly educated students, who are much better prepared to be productive in the 21st century.

My solution, project-based learning. It can be accomplished with fewer teachers, in the case of very small schools perhaps with as few as half the number of teachers.

So how his project-based learning better for kids? My opinion comes from my observations of Erie high school. I believe that those students are receiving an education that is far superior to kids in other schools in terms of preparing them for the 21st century.

So the problems we face today may actually lead to  a more well-educated student population. While there are other solutions that will cut cost and do minimal damage to the current system, I believe that moving to a project-based curriculum is the only solution I’ve seen that will reduce cost and at the same time lead to more well-educated students.

In an era of standardized test mania, student scores may not look as good in project-based learning, although I think there is evidence emerging that project-based learning schools aren’t any worse than test preparation schools in terms of standardized test scores.  But in terms of what students gain; 21st-century skills, individualized and customized education, learning by doing, student engagement, and preparation for heuristic work rather than algorithmic work, there is no doubt that project-based learning is a much better approach. And it costs less to do. –  Steve Wyckoff

Rex had a handful of students whose needs simply weren’t being met in a traditional educational setting. In fact, according to Rex, several of the young men were about to step away from becoming dropouts. But Rex, who readily admits that he was potentially one of those boys when he was in high school, knew the way to their hearts. He knew that if you want to hook a group of high school boys who are close to dropping out, and totally disengage from all school activities, the way to do it is in the car.

So Rex brought the boys together  to build a car. Not just any car, a 32 Ford roadster. Recently completed, the car was sold … for $31,000! That covered the cost of all the materials to build the car with something left over to put back into the program.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The program has doubled in size, has received many donated vehicles, and is well on its way to being a permanent fixture at Peabody-Burns high school. The students are working on their second 32 Ford, this time a touring car.

The program has all of the characteristics that make for great educational experience. The students are authentically engaged, in fact to the point that toward the end of building the first car the instructor, Matt, had to get permission to take some of the students home … at two o’clock in the morning! But it’s not just that the students are authentically engaged, in a learning-by-doing atmosphere they are applying  all of their academic learning in real situations.

I had the opportunity to visit with the instructor and the students last week.  Their stories range from hilarious to heartwarming. And all the kids have a story. But each individual will tell you what a difference the hot rod program has made in their lives. – Steve Wyckoff

Last week was a hectic week but it ended on a positive note. I got to attend MACE, that stands for Mid America Computers in Education, in Manhattan Kansas. MACE is always one of my favorite conferences to attend, not so much for the presentations but for the people. You see, MACE attract some of the most innovative, and creative, nerd wannabes around the state. For the most part they’re classroom teachers who are figuring out new and unique ways to use technology in their classrooms.

Typically, the presentations aren’t always the best, but I appreciate how many of these individuals are teachers taking a risk to stand in front of their peers and present. Many for the first time. The kinds of things they are doing in their classroom won’t get the attention of Bill Gates, they are swimming upstream against the system and for that they deserve a lot of credit.

MACE is always well run and the location on the campus of Kansas State University is beautiful. But I’m still most impressed with the enthusiasm, creativity, and innovation that the educators present are demonstrating. I wish, for the sake of all these individuals, their efforts were leading to more systemic change. Unfortunately there isn’t much of that going on in education today. You see very few administrators, principals or superintendents, at MACE. That’s a shame because they could learn a lot.

The good news is you hear very little, if any, discussion about raising standardized test scores. The bad news is conferences that don’t focus on standardized test scores don’t get very much attention. Focusing on standardized test scores is politically valuable, focusing on the stuff that the educators present at MACE focus on  means better educated kids. Unfortunately, in schools today we’re more interested in raising test scores than we are in providing a better educational experience for kids. If test scores did as much to prepare kids for the 21st century as do the educators at MACE public education would be in a lot better shape. – Steve Wyckoff

Even former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch agrees! Well she didn’t exactly say it’s a curse but she did say when speaking about No Child Left Behind, “… I’ve looked at the evidence and I’ve concluded they’re wrong. They’ve put us on the wrong track. I feel passionately about the improvement of public education and I don’t think any of this is going to improve public education.”  And I couldn’t agree more!

Her primary concern is the same as mine the emphasis on standardized tests.  I believe that we have created a culture of test taking skills, she believes we have created a culture of “cheating and dishonesty.”  I think that she believes the tests are important and that the scores mean something, I don’t think they’re important and I don’t think they mean nearly as much as we like to believe.

I see all too often schools that are focused on strategies to raise test scores, that have nothing to do with students learning more, and being able to apply the knowledge under real-world conditions.The net effect of the strategies is that our students by school more boring, and more irrelevant than ever. And boring and irrelevant are not desirable conditions for learning to occur.

However, it is encouraging that some high-level people, mostly former policymakers, are seeing that the top down, centrally controlled strategies for improving education aren’t working. Hopefully, those in charge will abandon these well-meaning but misguided strategies and focus on real systemic change that leads to the kind of educational system our kids need, and deserve, in the 21st century. – Steve Wyckoff

Compliance or engagement, which is most important? I am often concerned when educators talk about engagement that they are actually talking about compliance. Let me give you an example. I’ve seen several surveys that purport to measure engagement but when you look at what they measure they talk about students who get to class on time, students who turn in their homework, students who don’t miss school, and students to do their homework. To me those are all issues of compliance, students are doing what they’re told, when they are told, and how they are told.

Engagement on the other hand is much more about students that are so involved in what they’re doing that they lose track of time. So involved that they spend evenings and weekends working on schoolwork, not because they’re required to but because they want to.

But the most important issue around compliance and engagement is how well our students being prepared for their future. Students who are compliant are being perfectly prepared for algorithmic jobs. Those are the jobs that have established processes and procedures that lead to a defined correct outcome. That’s exactly what we prepare kids for in schools. Look at standardized tests, we want students to know exactly the right steps to come up with exactly the right answer. Algorithmic.

On the other hand, those jobs that don’t have established processes and procedures that don’t lead to one correct outcome make up about 70% of the new jobs being created in America. Yet in most schools little or no time  is spent with students in preparation for this heuristic types of work. Again, if you look at standardized tests they in no way reflect heuristic thinking.

So which is important compliance or engagement? Obviously the answer is engagement. Yet it’s not what we’re doing in schools. If we are going to prepare students for the 21st century  it’s important that they become self-directed, and problem solvers. And I don’t mean problems that have a well-defined process with one correct answer. For our students, having an educational system that is algorithmic by nature is boring and irrelevant. One of the keys to school change will be to quit focusing on standardized tests and instead preparing our kids for their future. That will mean making the educational experience heuristics in nature, not algorithmic. – Steve Wyckoff

I spent a lot of time thinking about what needs to change in schools, how we do school reform. I also spend a lot of time listening to books. Over the last several months I’ve listened to six books that make great connections for me. I’d recommend the following six books for every educator.

Drive – Daniel Pink
How We Decide – Jonah Lehrer
Talent Is Overrated – Geoff Colvin
The Talent Code – Daniel Coyle
Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
The Element – Sir Ken Robinson

So what do all these books have in common? They all deal with motivation, learning, and great performance. Let me give you the Reader’s Digest version of what I took from these books, but please read them and let me know what you think their importance is.

First of all there is a common thread through the six that motivation and excellence are linked to interest. Individuals who have high intrinsic interest in what they’re doing are better learners. So for schools this means that we must allow students to have choice in what it is that they’re learning.  School reformer Phil Schlecty always said that teachers don’t know what their job is. He said, ” That a teacher’s job is not to teach kids. A teacher’s job is to create work that is meaningful and engaging to the student, whereby they learn the things that we want them to learn.” He’s right on target according to these authors. We have to give kids work to do, but it has to be meaningful and engaging to them.

The second thread that runs through these books is that there is no such thing as inherent talent. There are several studies that are referred to that show two things. One, and individual must spend approximately 10 years and/or 10,000 hours involved in the pursuit to become an expert. But time alone is not enough, the individual must also spend that time in what the authors referred to as, “deliberate practice.” That’s practice that focuses on improving each and every facet of the performance. By the way, the performance can be physical or cognitive, it doesn’t matter.

So what does that mean to us in schools? Well the sad truth is what we have students practice most often for 10 years and/or 10,000 hours, is passively being compliant. We ask them to sit in the seat, do what they are told, do it when they are told, and do it how they are told to do it. If they run into trouble we tell them to raise their hand and we will answer their questions, and solve their problems.

Our current system is designed to reduce the deficits that our kids have. We identify what they’re not good at and we try to raise them to mediocrity. What we should be doing is identifying what they are good at, and letting them become experts in that area. In the real world if you can shine at something you can be a success, in spite of your deficits.

Does that mean that we ignore their deficits? Absolutely not, but we should improve on those deficits as part of the deliberate practice they do in the area that they have a high interest. So they will become experts in an area with the supporting skills and knowledge necessary.

So schools, start figuring out how to create educational experiences that are, long-term, engaging to each and every student on an individual basis, and allow the student to become an expert in what rows their boat in the 21st century. – Steve Wyckoff

We’ve never seen the kind of financial cuts that are taking place in education today. Regardless of how you feel about school finance, and the ability of school districts to utilize their money wisely, the cuts that are being made today in the majority of school districts are painful at best. Decisions are starting to impact staffing decisions, including classroom teachers.

But every cloud has a silver lining. And often times the silver lining doesn’t show itself until much later. School districts are looking at ways to save money, cut costs, and yet at the same time improve the quality of the educational opportunities their students receive.

Down the road we’re going to look back at the decisions that are being made and many of them will have historical significance. Some because they devastated the district, and some districts will never recover from those decisions. But others will lead to creative and innovative solutions that will indeed increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the education our kids receive.

Our industry has been amazingly stagnant for the last century. We are long overdue to redesign major parts of our educational system; what we teach, how we teach it, how we organize to teach it, and how we assess what we have taught. Hopefully,  we will talk about, what the kids learned, how they learned it, where and how they were grouped to learn it, and how they demonstrated their understanding and use of what they learned.

Hopefully there will be enough examples of creative and innovative solutions that they will impact the educational system systemically. What would I like to see those systemic changes be?

I’d love to see all of our students emotionally (authentically) engaged in their learning experiences  on a regular basis. I’d love to see the content of what they are learning be the knowledge and skills that will make them more productive in their lives after school. I’d love to see them organized like we organize for work in the real world, in ways that allow them to collaborate with their peers and with experts from the fields of their choice. I’d love to see us scrap the entire standardized testing system and instead evaluate student learning based on the skills and knowledge they obtain which are aligned with their desired career  areas. I’d love to see teachers functioning as cold learners with the students, assuming a much more Socratic role. And most of all I love to see our students leave school loving to learn, and self-directed in their lives.

Is there hope? Only time will tell. Right now there is little reason for hope. Almost all of the discussions are centered on what to cut. On the other hand I was at the Topeka USD 501 Board of Education meeting last night and they are doing a great job of discussing the changes they can make to reduce expenses while at the same time focusing on improved opportunities for all of their students.

We can only hope that education and educators don’t blow it. – Steve Wyckoff

We have an interesting situation developing across the state of Kansas that I suspect has happened, or will happen, and many other states. With the recent financial crisis we are seeing a dramatic increase in discussions about virtual courses for high school kids. To this point in time there has been very little interest among K-12 educators to use virtual courses, but as schools get more desperate to compensate for reduction in funding, school administrators are warming to the idea.

But the dilemma on the horizon is this. In traditional schools it is not uncommon, in fact it is very likely, that students will show up every day, sit passively in class, do the absolute bare minimum required, and get a passing grade. It takes very little effort on their part to do enough to make it through the system.

However, as students begin to take virtual courses they are required to engage differently and more intently in the course. The reason this occurs is that there is not an adult at the front of the room simply “dishing out” the information to them. They must actively seek the content knowledge and do with it whatever is required.

For the highly engaged, highly motivated student, this isn’t an issue. But for the student who is not highly engaged and isn’t self motivated it creates a dilemma. These students may well be sitting in a school room ostensibly taking a course in a traditional sense, but they aren’t doing any, or much, of the work.

We have seen this situation before. Their expectation is, and the expectation of their parents is, that if they were in the room and it’s a course offered by the school, then they should receive a passing grade and credit for the course. The conflict will occur when they don’t get a passing grade or are required to actually do the work before the grade is given, and it’s the end of the term.

A friend of mine who is a superintendent has already had to deal with this exact situation. Not only did the parents expect their child to receive a passing grade, they expected the grade to be an “A” or “B.” The kicker to all of this, some of the parents demanding this passing grade even though the students didn’t do the work, were teachers.

This is an indictment of the system and the pervasiveness of the thinking surrounding the expectations of schools. Even our educators believe that the student simply shows up and put in their time they’ve met minimum requirements. – Steve Wyckoff

If  you ask high school kids to describe school in one word, what word would they choose? I’ve asked this question for years, I’ve had four answers, worthless, prison, sucks, and

BORING

I do get the occasional answer that varies from these four, for instance I had a professor from a College of education tell me that he was positive most kids would answer with words like, invigorating, interesting, and stimulating. I suspected he may have been abusing drugs.

Phil Schlecty says that we get kids who are engaged in one of four ways:

Authentically engaged: these are the kids that are so engaged in what they’re doing that they lose track of time. They look up and the bell is ringing, and they didn’t even know that the end of the period was at hand. These are the kids that Csikszentmihalyi would say or in “flow.” This is the state of engagement that we should try to achieve as often as possible, but rarely see especially in our core curricula.

Ritualistically engaged: these are the kids that say, “Don’t tell me what I  need to learn, tell me what I’ve got to do to get an A.” These are the teacher pleasers. They’ve learned how to play the game of school. Sadly when we talk about students being engaged, we mean ritualistically engaged. These are the kids that turn their homework everyday, show up to class every day and on time, smile at like they care, and do what they’re told.

Passive compliant:  these are the kids that say, “Don’t tell me what I need to learn, tell me what I’ve got to do to get by.” These are the students that the teacher has the unwritten agreement with, if they don’t bother the teacher, the teacher won’t bother them. Sadly these kids float through school making passing grades, just barely, never being authentically engaged, and never understanding the joy of being in a state of flow.

Rebellious: these are the kids that just don’t tolerate the system and let us know about it. Their needs aren’t being met but they refuse to sit by passively as victims of the system. They rebel in different ways, some angrily, some through passive aggressiveness, and some who just quit coming, either literally or intellectually.

I think the Phil Schlecty has one of my most often quoted statements. Phil Says

” A teacher’s job is not to teach kids. A teachers job is to create meaningful engaging work whereby the kids learn the things we want them to learn.” -  Phil Schlecty

I think he’s right on target. If we give kids work that is meaningful and engaging to them, and it teaches them the things that we want them to learn, we will have made great strides toward improving our schools. Our goal should be to constantly increase the level of authentic engagement on the part of every student in the system. – Steve Wyckoff

Erie school district has been blessed. By Mike Carson, Rose Frey, Ted Hill, and many many others who were involved in the transformation of their school. Erie high school is unique. What makes them unique is that their focus is on their students, and their student’s futures.

Erie high school has changed what the students learn, how the students learn, and how they organize the students to learn. In addition, while the students do take the state mandated standardized tests, their students are measured in much different ways than almost all other kids across the country.

The curriculum used in Erie high school is based on projects and problems designed by each individual student, based on their own interest, needs, and desires. And the results have been equally unique, students, and I mean all students, have far exceeded the normal expectations we have for high school kids. And, as former superintendent Mike Carson is fond of saying, “It isn’t just the head cheerleader and the quarterback that are doing great things.”

What Erie high school has figured out is how to not just expose their kids to curriculum with all the standards, but how to actually engage the students in meaningful work, whereby the kids learn the things that they want them to learn. Is it perfect? No. There have been, and continue to be, many issues. But unlike school improvement in traditional schools, they are getting better at the right things, rather than just getting better at what schools have always done.

I’ve observed for the last 40 years scores of creative an innovative projects. Some big, some small. The thing that they all had in common was a champion. The sad truth is, as soon as the champion moved on, and eventually they always do, the gravity of the status quo always pulled the project back into the mainstream and morphed it into a traditional program. There seems to be no way to make real systemic change in the educational system.

So I’m watching Erie high school with great interest. The superintendent has retired, as has the high school principal responsible for the project-based, problem-based learning curriculum. Other changes have been made with key personnel. My hope is that the model employed in Erie high school will spread across the state and the country.  The hope is that new champions have replaced the old champions.

I have low expectations. In spite of the fact that their kids are doing exceptional things and are truly well-prepared for the life they’re going to live; and in spite of the fact that it is actually cheaper to educate kids in this model; and in spite of the fact that we are in a financial crisis; I fear that it is impossible to actually make sustainable systemic change in public schools.

Time will tell.

I love technology. I’m a gadget guy. I use technology to learn. when I want to learn something new I google it, I look it up in Wikipedia, and I try to watch it on YouTube. And I always try to figure out what is the best tool to accomplish the work I’m doing, and to improve my productivity.

So what does that have to do with kids in school? I have the opportunity to interact with lots of educational technologists. And I’m always kind of disturbed by the discussions that occur between educators and the instructional technologists. It appears to me that the goal of educational technology is to make the things we have been doing in school for the last 115 years tolerable for the kids.

So why the title of this blog? It is my belief that we should be using technology with every single student in a manner that is much more congruent with how technology is used in the real world. What I see in schools is technology being used as a method to increase the engagement of our students in curriculum that they consider to be boring and irrelevant. As if somehow using technology will entertain the students enough that they’ll ignore their emotions, or lack of emotions, they have about the curriculum we make them cover.

Of course this isn’t a technology problem, it’s an education problem. It’s just that I’m bothered when I see technology used as a strategy to deal with a symptom rather than the systemic problems that are causing it.

Consider this, if we had kids using technology like it’s used in the real world, we would have to give them real world problems, or at least simulations of real world problems. That in turn would require us to integrate our curriculum, and tear down the silos between content areas. That in turn would mean that instead of covering a list of standards and benchmarks we would cover the things that are inherent in real-world problems.

The problem with that? Well obviously our kids wouldn’t be prepared for college after such an experience. But on the other hand, they would be much better prepared for the real world. Perhaps, we should have a discussion with postsecondary education, specifically the four-year colleges, about changing their requirements and their curriculum! And perhaps then we could change the core curriculum in our schools to meet the needs of our students rather than the needs of colleges.

I know this is a novel thought, and for some heresy, but perhaps colleges should look at how well they are preparing their students for the real world. Just a thought.

Over the last month I’ve had the opportunity to visit with several friends and colleagues. It’s always great to catch up with people, especially those in your profession, that you don’t get to have a conversation with very often. These conversations were eerily familiar. But before I tell you about the conversations I need to tell you about the people.

Each of these individuals is highly successful in their particular niche in education. Each of them is positive, hard-working, and highly respected by their peers. They include nationally prominent speakers, directors of highly successful alternative programs, policy makers, instructional technologists, and school administrators. If you would observe them functioning in a professional setting you would applaud their efforts and results. You would also see that other educators look to them for leadership.

Each of the conversations was similar in that each had just finished a lively and positive professional conversation. But when we sat down to talk each began with a similar, rhetorical question. “Steve, what’s going to happen to education?” The conversations that followed included discussions about the insane focus on standardized tests, memorization and not learning, bored to tears students who are measured by compliance not engagement, the lack of innovation and creativity in education, etc.

These conversations were not out of the ordinary for me. Whenever I’m in a group as a presenter or participant, I always try to have one-on-one conversations where I can really get people to tell me their deepest feelings about our profession. I intentionally try to have conversations with those individuals who in the larger group are upbeat and positive.

It’s alarmingly common that in private these individuals tell me about their frustration level and diminishing hope for public education. And often times they ask, partially rhetorically, how are they going to keep doing what they’re doing. Each day for them is a struggle to remain positive and proactive.

I’m still connecting all the dots in my head, Dan Pink’s new book, Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us, really has me thinking. I’ve listened to it once but I need to listen to it again. And in fact I’ve even bought the hard copy so that I can look up some specific points. For those of you who know me, when I buy the hardcopy of the book it’s serious business.

So in upcoming posts I’ll try to explain what’s become clear to me about the educational system and what drives our educators. As always, leave a comment above to know what you’re thinking.

Drive by Dan Pink

One of the biggest issues that we face in education is that we are in adequately preparing our kids for their future. I recently finished Dan pink’s new book Drive, and sure enough more evidence that we’re not preparing our kids for the 21st century.

Let me explain. In his book he talks about two kinds of work. The first, algorithmic, “are those tasks in which you follow a set of established instruction down to a single pathway to one conclusion.” The second, heuristic, are  “tasks that are just the opposite. Because no algorithm exists for it, you have to experiment with possibilities and devise a novel solution.” Now, which of those most sound like school. You got it, the vast majority of the work done by our kids in school is algorithmic. In fact, the measure that the public, well politicians anyway, love is the standardized test. Most of which measure how well the student follows established instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion.

Interestingly, those activities in school that are most algorithmic are in our beloved core curriculum. Which by the way happen to be the classes that kids see as the most boring and irrelevant. On the other hand, those activities   which are the most  heuristic are found in the co-curricular courses, and extracurricular activities. Drama, band, art, newspaper, yearbook, athletics … you get the picture.

But here’s the kicker, again from Pink’s book, “McKinsey & Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30% of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70% comes from heuristic work.” He goes on, “A key reason routine work can be outsourced or automated; artistic, empathic, nonroutine, work generally cannot.”

One of my favorite educational researchers Larry Lezotte always said, “What gets measured gets taught.”  Well, what we’re measuring in schools is the algorithmic stuff, that means that it will get taught! So we are doing a great job spending most of our time making sure that students acquire the skills and behaviors that are most likely to be outsourced to other countries.

What do you think? Leave me a comment.

I had a thought some years ago while visiting with some students at our charter school. It became clear to me that students do not come to school intending to learn. It was a real epiphany for me because I, like everyone else, assumed that kids come to school to learn, and that’s what the kids intend to do when they get to school. But it simply isn’t the case.  As I thought about that in the intervening years I think the kids come to school for three reasons.

1. serve time
2. get grades
3. socialize

I think those are the three reasons kids come to school, and not necessarily in that order. The longer students are in school the more they see school as something they just have to do for 13 years. I have a friend who as a principal would tell kids when they said, “this place is like a prison.”, that, “no it isn’t, in prison you can get out early for good behavior.”

Instead of learning, kids intend to get grades. And believe me, as a career educator, there is very little correlation between high grades and learning. Okay, so that’s probably an overstatement, but not a total over statement. Grades are much more an indicator of compliance, and the ability to please the teacher, then they are learning. I blogged about this before, but getting high test scores and high grades don’t necessarily mean the student learned anything long-term, nor could they use it in a unique situation.  Which to me are the real indicators of learning.

But the real intention of most kids, most the time, when they come to school is to socialize. Part of that is just human nature, we are after all social creatures and our kids have so many peers to interact with at school.  And even if they did come to school intending to learn socializing would still be one of their primary intentions when they come to school.

For me, as an educator, the saddest thing about this is how many of our kids associate “learning” with negative emotions. Too many of our kids think of learning as boring, irrelevant, tedious, and other negative emotions. Over the last many years I have probably asked the following question of over 25,000 people. I have only had four answers in all those years. The question I ask is this, “If you ask high school kids to describe school in one word, what word would they choose?” The answer that I get 99% of the time is “boring.” And in fact, on the slide I use to ask this question I also have the question, “Is boredom a desirable condition for learning to occur?” I know to ask this question on my slide because the answer “boring” is given so often. The other answers I’ve received over the years? Worthless,  prison, and sucks. None of these terms is very flattering.

But that all supports my position, when kids consider learning they see it as a negative. Which is truly sad because learning should be a personally meaningful experience. And if you consider learning, even for kids, outside of the classroom, learning is very meaningful and engaging. Just think about your favorite activity or hobby. You can get lost in it for hours. A students learning experience in school should be meaningful and engaging in the same way.

In fact, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a professor of psychology, has spent his life studying what he calls, “flow.” When Csikszentmihalyi talks about “flow” he talks about a psychological state that is very positive and exhilarating. His characteristics are worth looking at and will do that in a future blog post.

I see this situation as a challenge for educators. We need to change the educational experience of students so that it is meaningful and engaging on a regular basis for them. We do need to discuss the term “engaging” because, as Phil Schlechty has shown us, there are four ways in which students are engaged in our classrooms. That too the conversation for another day.

So what do you think? Think back on your school days and ask yourself what were your intentions when you went to school each day? Leave me a comment, I’d love to know what you’re thinking.