What's Become Clear

Have you ever learned something that later on down the road you realize that your life would have been easier if you hadn’t learned it? Well I have. Several years ago my good friend Tammy Worcester attended a national conference. When she returned she asked me if I’d ever heard of a man named Roger Shank. I hadn’t. Tammy went on to tell me that I needed to read his book because he been a wonderful presentation as a keynote  speaker.

So I purchased Roger’s book, Coloring Outside The Lines. I loved the book and so I decided to contact Roger. The rest, as they say, is history. Over the ensuing years I have paid close attention to the work that Roger and his many talented colleagues are doing. They have reshaped how I think about schools. Which can be a very frustrating thing because there is so little we can do to change schools.

You see, Roger has made me see how what we do in schools has little to do with learning, especially learning that will enable the student to be a more productive member of society. In Roger’s words, “How we teach is antithetical to how we learn.” Roger talks about, “natural learning” and how it is different than what we do in schools. So here’s a quick look at the difference.

Natural learning occurs when an individual wants to learn to do something:

1. The learner has a goal. The more ownership the student has in the goal the better it is, but a skilled educator can create goals that motivate the student.  All learning occurs when the student does something, the goal is to learn to do that “something.”

2. The learner must then develop their own plan for achieving the goal. This plan is the path that the student has chosen to follow in pursuit of his goal.

3. As the student begins to implement their plan they will have expectations.  In their mind they believe they know what to expect as they proceed with their plan.

4. Along this path there will always be expectation failure or surprise. It’s inevitable nothing can be learned without either failing or being surprised that their plan succeeded.

5. Following expectation failure or surprise is the explanation that leads to student learning.  This explanation can come in many forms. It can be a teacher explaining, a video, a book, a website etc. This is the moment that learning occurs.

In natural learning the cycle is constantly repeated. If you think about it, it’s how we learn everything. How you learned to walk, how you learn to talk, how you learned to crochet, how you learn to fish. It’s also how you learned to read and how you learned to calculate.

So how does this compare to what we do in schools? Let’s look at our approach in traditional classrooms.

1. Explanation

2. Explanation

3. Explanation

4. Test

This is exactly the cycle we follow in traditional classroom. Our hope is that the students will remember what we told them long enough to regurgitate it on the test. And more and more that test is becoming a high-stakes State administered standardized tests thanks to No Child Left Behind.

So Roger has led to a great deal of frustration on my part. As they say ignorance is bliss. And my life as an educator was much easier before I considered how kids actually learn. –  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

Of all the things I speak about, the slide I use that lists 10 behaviors that I identify as  “21st-century behaviors” is one of the most popular. I put this list together over the last many years from various sources. To be added to the list a behavior must be frequently mentioned in many sources. The 10 behaviors are:

1. Technological Fluency: The ability to use technology as a tool. To be completely comfortable using various forms of technology and use it with the ease that we would use paper and pencil.
2. Communication … Verbal proficiency: Of all the subjects we make students take, the one we make them take every year of their educational experience is English/Language arts. You would think with all that effort our students would be excellent communicators. Yet one of the most commonly heard concerns from the business community is the inability of our students to communicate either verbally, or in writing.
3. Collaboration … Leadership/Coordination/ Teamwork/Interpersonal Skills/Relationships/horizontal collaboration: The ability to work with others in all of its forms is critical today. Most of our kids will function in work environment that requires them to be a team player.
   
4. Solve Complex Problems: The world we live in and the problems that arise in that world are growing ever more complex. Often times requiring skills and knowledge from multiple disciplines, including use of technology. It is imperative that our graduates have the ability to work in this complex society and solve problems.
5. Gumption … Self-Direction and Reflection Skills: Gumption is not a word that we hear often but it describes clearly what employers today expect. We sometimes hear stick-to-itiveness  used as a synonym for gumption. The point is in the workplace today when confronted with difficulties individuals are expected to work through the issues, to be self-directed and to stick to a problem until it is solved.
   
6. Creativity and Innovative: Creativity is more often thought about in the extracurriculars but that’s not necessarily the kind of creativeness I’m referring to. While art and music are excellent preparation for the real world, the creativity I’m talking about is the ability to think differently than others and to come up with solutions that not only work but are innovative.
7. Analytical and  Critical Thinking Skills: Related to gumption and complex problem solving, individual today are expected to analyze the situation and think about it critically and solving problems.
8. Initiative, Work Ethic, Honesty, Integrity and Ambition: This collection of adjectives centers on the attributes that are desirable of all employees, and many times are referred to as character.
9. Adaptable … Versatilist: In a rapidly changing society it is imperative that individuals are able to adapt to change and modifications in the workplace, practices, and even knowledge. Versatilist is a term that was coined by Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat to describe those individuals who are versatile and adaptable.
10. Inquisitiveness: Last but not least those individuals who are asking why and how, in other words always inquiring in order to improve their knowledge, or processes, or procedures.

In the lower right-hand corner of the slide that I use during presentations I place the following picture. And the question I ask is this, in the classroom pictured can these 10 critical behaviors be practiced on a regular basis? The typical answer, “no.”

For our schools to give students the opportunity to develop these behaviors it is essential that schools, especially high schools, engage in school improvement processes that involve learning by doing rather than memorization for standardized tests. Practicing these behaviors to make them habitual cannot be done sitting in a desk listening to a teacher in a traditional classroom.

Dan Pink would say that we need less algorithmic practice that we see in traditional classrooms, and more heuristic practice to prepare kids for the 21st century. Those heuristic behaviors, innovative and creative, can only be practiced in an environment that is more customized and individualized for each student. – 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

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.

It’s funny how we carry definitions around in our head and we assume that other people have those same definitions. When we have discussions about school reform, school redesign, and change, we often times think that we are talking about the same thing as other people but in reality we have very different perspectives.

So I want to take this opportunity to clarify how I see these issues. When I think of school reform and school redesign I do it from the perspective of real systemic change. I know many educators consider the continuous improvement of what we’ve always done has reform, redesigned, and change. I don’t. This has been the main source of my disagreement with educators about whether or not schools are changing.

If I have a criticism of educators who take this view it’s that this perspective places all the responsibility for change on the individual classroom teacher. It assumes that ultimately if we do what we’ve always done except that we do it much more effectively and efficiently we have changed education. I approach this from a little different angle. I like to ask the question, “If magically all of our kids were proficient on standardized tests, and we had no dropouts, would society be satisfied with our product?” I think the answer is no, and the vast majority of people I’ve asked this question of agree with me.

It is my belief that if we are going to satisfy the needs of the 21st century society we must look at dramatically changing  4 major areas in education, what we teach, how we teach, how we organize to teach, and how we assess what we’ve taught.  And we cannot deal with each of these in isolation, the four must be dealt with simultaneously.

We have two major problems with what we teach, one is our core curriculum, the classes that we make students take were defined more than 115 years ago by the Committee of 10. Secondly, the content within those classes fundamentally was defined  115 years ago also, and  any updates to the content was done by content area experts whose primary goal was to align their curriculum with content necessary for a four-year liberal arts degree. Little of what we teach today prepares students to be successful in a 21st-century society.

The roots of our instructional model is also several hundred years old, and it focuses on what individuals know, not on what they know how to do with what they know. In an era of ubiquitous information focusing students on memorizing material, absent a context for using what they know, is ludicrous. We must move to an instructional model that incorporates learning by doing.

As long as we are organized by department and separate the day into segregated parts we will never achieve the integration necessary for kids to understand how what they are learning fits into the real world. We must eliminate departmentalization and moved to to an organizational structure that more closely resembles how the real world works.

I’ve saved the best for last. Standardized tests have become the focus of what we do in schools. And yet few educators believe that a standardized test score accurately represents what the student is capable of doing or what kind of a job the teacher did. They are analogous to passing the written part of the driving test and declaring the student to be a good driver.

So when I talk about school reform, school redesign, and change, I’m talking about the real systemic issues that we face not simply getting better at what we’ve always done.

You read that right, we are cursed by our core curriculum. Did you know that our core curriculum is over 115 years old? Did you know that it was created to make life easier on universities in 1892 America? Did you know that the president of Harvard University in 1892, Charles Elliott, formed the Committee of 10 to define the high school curriculum?

Take a few minutes and read the final report from the committee of 10 and you’ll be astounded. I put together PowerPoint slides that outline the curriculum designed by the Committee of 10, who completed their work in 1894. I’ve shown the slides often to audiences and asked them what it represents. In Kansas, where I reside, it is often identified as the Regents curriculum. The high school curriculum required of high school students in Kansas to gain admission to the six regents universities. I’ve shown the slides around the country with similar results.

And yes it’s 115 years old. And it needs to be questioned, and changed. Not only is it not appropriate for a student being prepared to be a productive member of the 21st century society, it isn’t even appropriate for preparing a student to go to Harvard University in the 21st century. That’s because the curriculum was designed to prepare kids to go Harvard University in 1894 and Harvard University has changed so dramatically since 1894 that students taking the curriculum now are ill-prepared.

In an age of customization and individualization a curriculum that is 115 years old is boring and irrelevant to the vast majority of our students in high school. When we talk about school reform and school change you never hear a discussion about junking the core curriculum. But that’s exactly a conversation that we should be having.

What’s even worse, in my state of Kansas, the Board of Regents won’t even allow the curriculum to be taught in applied courses, which only adds to its irrelevance for kids. If we were serious about a 21st-century curriculum, our students would be emerged in learning by doing experiences, that are contextually based in the real world. I think that it’s obvious that the younger the student the less likely they are to be able to learn abstract concepts without a real world context for learning. Yet that is exactly what we’re asking them to do. And we wonder why our kids aren’t prepared for the next level of education.

If we didn’t require core curriculum courses, I would be amazed if more than a handful of our kids ever voluntarily took courses in the core curriculum. If our core curriculum teachers had to compete for students like our elective course teachers do, I can assure you the content and instructional strategies would be far different than they are today.

But don’t be confused that I think courses are good. They aren’t. The way we put courses in divided silos only adds to the irrelevance for our kids. The world that our kids will live in is integrated and their learning should be also. And the context of what they learn should be the real world. We’ve allowed the academics in our colleges and universities to dictate what, and how, we teach long enough. Our job is not to please the professors at our universities, but rather to prepare our kids for their future.

So if you have an opinion on this rather controversy stand let me know by leaving a comment below. I look forward to hearing from you.