The G Word

Disclaimer: I am about to bring up a bunch of issues that I don't necessarily have solid answers to. Consider this post a collection of ideas in the making, not a collection of solutions (just yet, although I'd LOVE to get there someday).

     The G word. Something that for many teachers, especially those practicing or considering the practice of differentiated instruction, is becoming increasingly exasperating. Grading. There, I said it. 
     Now, there are a lot of reasons why bringing up grading with teachers might be synonymous with cursing. It can feel like a never-ending process. It can take up lots of time. True, and true. But today I want to focus on what, for me -- especially in light of my recent obsession with differentiated instruction [DI] -- is most frustrating about the traditional practice of grading.
     As I read book after book and article after article on DI, I grow more and more in love with the philosophy behind it. But this little voice in the back of my head will insist on asking questions, like "I get how teachers can teach in a DI classroom, but how can they grade in one?" I am not alone in this concern. I've had several conversations with several teachers during which they express the same concern.
     Luckily for me, I just finished reading Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design by Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe. And when I reached chapter 8, "Grading and Reporting Achievement," I became a very excited reader. What follows is what I gleaned from the chapter, my reactions to this, and some questions I think all educators need to consider if DI is truly going to function fully as a means of providing the best education to all students.
     Here's the overall problem: traditional grading and reporting practices as we have known them for decades do not mesh well with the philosophy and practice of DI. Why not? Because traditional grading practices require teachers to keep a rank book (paper or digital) in which the perception is that teachers will record a significant number of grades for the given term. I know many teachers who fret over not having enough grades in their rank book, so, trust me, the quantitative aspect of it is something teachers focus on. Sometimes the more grades one has recorded for a term in one's rank book, the more armed they feel should they ever have to defend a particular student's grade. Now, I get all that. I've lived all that as a teacher. But in embracing DI, I've had to face the ugly reality that this doesn't make sense. Why not? The biggest factor rests in the practice of beginning to assign grades to students at the very beginning of a marking quarter and continuing throughout the quarter to add more and more grades. The issue here is that, at the end of the quarter, the teacher then averages all these grades together, culminating in one final term grade. Here's the rub: Should a student's assessments from early in a term really impact his or her final grade for that term? What if they didn't understand the material during the third week of the term (thus doing poorly on assessments) but made great strides, and had come close to mastering the material by the term's end? Perhaps this student's understanding of the material during the last week of the term looks like a B+, but, when averaged in with those early assessments, the grade for the term becomes a D+. Isn't there something wrong with this? Shouldn't a student's grade be indicative of performance on summative assessments only, summative assessments which are designed to assess what the student has finally learned by a unit's end (versus the formative assessments given prior that really should only be used to inform further instruction and goal-setting)? As Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) suggest, ". . . the student should not be penalized for failure to demonstrate mastery in the second or fourth weeks. . . . In other words, what a student learns should be more important than when he or she learns it" (p. 132). 

     I did begin this post with a disclaimer, stating that I personally have no solid solutions to these problems as of yet. I recognize that changing how quarter grades are determined and how they are reported (which is currently on a report card for most districts) would be a huge undertaking for any school or district. But, Tomlinson and McTighe, as well as grading expert Ken O'Connor, have made suggestions that I think are well worth considering.

     O'Connor (as cited in Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006, p. 132) "suggests that grades should be 'determined' from various sources of evidence, rather than 'calculated' in a purely quantitative manner." He goes on to suggest that, should averaging be required by the district, teachers should use "the median or mode -- not the mean -- as the basis for arriving at a grade." 

     Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) present a total alternative to the report card as most of us know it. They recommend that schools and districts switch to using "reporting systems that support standards and differentiation" (p. 135). Rather than using a single grade to try and report "all that we need to say about a student's learning," they propose "that at least two, and preferably three, separate factors be reported: (1) grades for achievement of goals, (2) progress towards goals, and (3) work habits." When I read this, I almost fell out of my seat. This notion is so thrilling to me. I can't think of a better way to communicate a student's individual achievement and progress, not to mention placing value on work ethic. 
     So, what do you think? I'll leave you with the questions Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) share at the beginning of this inspiring (to me, at any rate!) chapter:

How will we know that we are providing high-quality feedback to parents and students?

How might we ensure that the information we transmit in the grading and reporting process is useful in supporting the learning process?

How should we grade and report in ways that encourage learner success?

Important questions! I'd love to hear what you think, readers.

Potpourri

     Ah, yes. Potpourri. It's the Jeopardy category that pops up from time to time, letting you know that, either the Jeopardy writers just couldn't think of one more category, or, as I like to think of it, they got excited about a bunch of different things and wanted to throw them all in there.
     Well, for this week's blog, I am borrowing from the Jeopardy writers due to my own excitement about a bunch of different ideas, reflections, and experiences I've had lately due to my most recent readings, research, and work in classrooms. Please enjoy the potpourri!

How Cool are Socratic Circles?

     This week, I had the amazing opportunity to help launch the use of Socratic Circles in a fifth grade class. In preparation for this, I decided to take a second look at Matt Copeland's Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School. I love a lot about this book! The best is how positive Copeland is about students' abilities to maintain a thought-provoking and meaningful discussion. Having seen Socratic Circles function smoothly in a high school setting, I was intrigued to see them in an upper elementary classroom. The discussions were mind-blowing. Not only was the content of the discussions great, but even better was how reflective the students were in terms of how the discussions were going, and what they could do to improve. Granted, there is preparation and instruction that goes into this. But the overall moral of the story? Your students can do this, can do it well, and can learn a lot from these types of experiences. Try it out! 

How Cool is Carol Ann Tomlinson?

     Okay, I know I'm getting into a little bit of hero worship here, but, seriously, she's just great. I just finished her book on Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom and it is a must read for anyone who needs to take their own pulse on how they feel about the philosophy of DI. The best chapter (although it's really hard to choose one!!) has to be chapter three, in which Tomlinson writes about how to invite students to be a part of the vision of DI. What makes this the best chapter, arguably, is that most other books on DI seem to ignore this, allowing for the reader to assume that students will just automatically go along with a differentiated classroom. Tomlinson's points about developing a classroom community that embraces the DI philosophy are spot on. In order for this to work, why wouldn't we involve our students as part of the plan?

How Cool are Teachers?

     As an instructional coach new to the job, I have been and continue to be inspired by the number of teachers in my new district who have reached out to me in order to collaborate on trying something new in their classrooms, or on reaching certain goals they have set for themselves as teachers. What an amazing profession of lifelong learners! What amazing role modeling for our students. 

The DI Philosophy: Some Food for Thought

     Lately, I've been reading Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom (2010) by none other than the queen of DI herself, Carol Ann Tomlinson. I just finished the first few chapters, which are dedicated to the philosophy of differentiated instruction.
     That's something about DI that we can't afford to neglect -- it truly is a philosophy, a way of thinking about teaching and learning. Differentiated instruction is not a set of activities that you can just begin incorporating into your classroom. It is a belief system about how all our students learn, a system that then must inform our planning. Truly, I think the planning aspects of DI are the most significant part of implementing this type of instruction in the classroom. Yes, DI can -- and should -- happen "in the moment," but it is when we delve into our planning with DI as the consistent focus that we can see the most results.
     With all that said, I'd like to use this particular post to share some of Tomlinson's thoughts on the subject. Consider the following statements from her food for thought. How do these ideas relate to your own classrooms and to your own belief systems about teaching and learning?

Today's youth are "young people who live in a world of personalization -- at least outside of school. They are accustomed to watching a particular television show when it's convenient rather than when it's broadcast. They no longer buy entire albums to 'own' a particular song but rather download just the selections they like. They order computers specifically designed for their needs. They get news on demand and information they need when they need it. In school, however, we teach them as though their variance in readiness, individual interests, and particular approaches to learning were of no consequence" (p. 4).

"During differentiation, we emphasize the methods that students use to access key content . . . rather than change the content itself" (p. 15).

"Readiness is not a synonym for ability. . . . The term ability connotes what we sometimes believe to be a more or less fixed and inborn trait. Readiness suggests a temporary condition that should change regularly as a result of high-quality teaching" (p. 16).

"Inevitably, we'll find that students are in different places with their mastery of . . . goals. Then, . . . because we want to make sure each student succeeds, we have no choice but to differentiate instruction" (p. 27).

"Teachers with a growth mind-set work from the premise that virtually any student can learn anything if the student is willing to work hard and if he or she has support in that effort" (p. 32).

"We tend to see and think of our students as a group. We say, 'The students always love it when we do this lab,' or 'The students don't understand inverting fractions,' or 'The students were restless today.' No doubt a number of students do like the lab, don't understand how and when to invert fractions, and were restless today, but there's also little doubt that some students found the lab pointless or confusing, could teach a cogent lesson on inverting fractions, and were perfectly calm and ready to learn today. It's virtually impossible to attend to student differences when we think of 'the students' as a single entity" (p. 36).

"Good teaching -- the really good stuff -- is hard work" (p. 37).

     Now, I'm not going to pretend some of these ideas are instantly easy to adopt. Sometimes it's hard to read some of this stuff, for me, because I am forced to admit to myself when I've made some mistakes as a teacher. But I cannot fundamentally disagree with Tomlinson's ideas, nor do I think most teachers would. It's time to look the philosophy of DI head-on and start to embrace what it can do for our teaching and for our students' learning.

Instructional Coaching -- an Extended Metaphor

     First things first: I ran into a teacher from the district I am working in as an instructional coach (IC) the other day and she told me she has been reading my blog!!! It's so exciting to know I have a reader. But, in all my excitement, I now forget this wonderful and wise woman's name (was it Rhonda? I'm just not sure), but here's a shout-out anyway to my faithful reader! 
     For this one lovely reader and for anyone else who may be tuning in, a little recap as context for this week's blog. As I ran around town in my new district, presenting at each of the schools an introduction of what instructional coaching is all about, I spoke about a metaphor I happen to like for the collaboration between a teacher and an IC. Here's the recap: 
     I've been long-distance running since I was 14. In high school, I ran cross country and track and had some good and not-so-good coaches along the way. Now, many, many years beyond high school, I know how to be a long-distance runner. If I go out for a 10K, I know how to approach it. But recently I decided to train for a marathon -- something totally new to me. So, even though I'd been running since the age of 14, I decided to partner up with a new friend of mine who had some marathon experience so that we could train together. He didn't need to teach me how to run -- I already knew how to do that. But, trying something new like a marathon is just simpler and more effective when you're doing it alongside a partner, coach, friend. 
     This is a great metaphor for how ICs and teachers should work together. As an IC, I know I am not here to teach established teachers how to teach -- they're already doing it. But they may want to try something new in their classrooms, and it just might be simpler and more effective to have someone by their side while they're doing it.
     Here's the update on this metaphor, extending it, if you will. I moved a couple weeks ago, so I now live about an hour or so from my running buddy. This past weekend, my training plan dictated that I go for an 18-mile run. Not being able to hook up with my now long-distance pal, I decided to go it alone. In case you've never tried, let me tell you that 18 miles is a long time to run by yourself. Three hours with nothing but my own thoughts. It became a mental game. I had a hard time keeping myself motivated, I was grumpy and distracted. So distracted that I ended up making silly running mistakes I thought I was beyond making, like starting off too fast and running too many hills within the first half of my run. In the end, I only made it to 16 miles before I gave up (I know, in retrospect, 16 miles is nothing to sneeze at).
     The moral of the story -- and of the metaphor -- is this: Even though I have been training with my running partner for a couple months now, doing one long run together each weekend, I wasn't completely ready to go it alone. I regressed a bit to some of my older, solo running habits. I lost my motivation. 
     I've been doing a lot of research on how to be an effective instructional coach. And much of it has told me that as a support for the teacher, you shouldn't remove yourself too quickly. Just because the teacher has tried out a new teaching strategy and it went well once doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is over. Often, teachers need the IC to continue to stick it out until the new strategy becomes second-nature. Adopting a new practice can be challenging!
     So, this weekend I am making the one-hour trek down to my old stomping grounds to run with my friend. We have a couple more really long runs before we get to start tapering (shortening our distances before the big race day). I know I can do those shorter distances (anything under 14 miles or so) alone. But for now, I realize I do still need support during those long, long runs. 
     For teachers who are or will be working with me as an IC: I know each of you will work with me for different lengths of time. Some of you will need my support for much longer than others, depending on what it is we're working on in your classroom. I hope that we can reflect together to know when to start "tapering" our work together, and not to do it too soon!
     In closing, I'll say to you, reader(s?!?!), something I used to say to my former high school English students which was often followed by understandable groans at my cheesiness:

                                                         ~Metaphors be with you.~


(If you don't get it, try saying it in the voice of Yoda or Obe Wan Kanobe.)

My Academic Crush on Lucy Calkins

     Ok. I have a confession to make. Despite the fact that I am engaged to a wonderful man, a true partner through and through, I've fallen for someone else. I really didn't see it coming, but, earlier this week, I picked up a series of books by Lucy Calkins on writer's workshops in the primary grades, and, well, it was love at first sight.
     Ms. Calkins, or, if I may be so bold, Lucy (as she refers to herself throughout the texts) is a master. And while I could go on and on (and on and on) about my newfound love for her, I'll just share one major thing that made my heart go pitter patter.
     She calls her students writers. Her kindergarten and first grade students. When it's time for them to come to the rug for the workshop's mini-lesson, she invites them: "Writers, let's gather." When she needs to interrupt their work to offer a suggestion to the whole class, she asks for her writers' attention.
     Seem small? Seem like no big deal? Maybe at very first glance, but think about the message she is sending to these students. She is empowering them through her use of this one word, allowing them each to own the role of writer. It is one simple, consistent way to demonstrate her belief in her students. I think it's beautiful. And it is something each and every one of us educators can do.
     Yes, Calkins's book is geared towards K-1 classrooms, but why should the above-mentioned message need to change as students get older? Can't they always be called writers by their teachers in 5th grade, 7th grade, in 12th? Can't we also start calling our students artists, mathematicians, musicians, scientists, historians, sociologists.....? I say -- why not? Perhaps some would argue with me (and, shudder to think, with Lucy!). Maybe some would say, "But a 4th grader is not a mathematician. And my 10th grader who is struggling with algebra is certainly not a mathematician." My counterargument is that they are studying these fields and doing work in these fields every day, regardless of their stumbling blocks. Now, I'm not talking about building up a false sense of ability or achievement or confidence so much so that our young mathematicians and artists and historians don't realize that there's still room for improvement. I'm just suggesting that we consider taking a page out of Lucy Calkins's brilliant book and see what it's like to empower and recognize our students and the work they are doing, wherever they're at with it. What better way to motivate them to rise to the occasion?

Thoughts on Differentiated Instruction...

     This week I began reading Rick Wormeli's Differentiation: From Planning to Practice. First of all, this is a great text. I mean, GREAT. Wormeli is so practical; he really paints the picture of what his ideas look like in the planning process and in the classroom. No huge chunks of theory here -- just take it and use it immediately.
     Since I've been reading up so much lately on RTI, I can't help but draw comparisons and links between these two instructional concepts. In fact, I wish there were a nicer way to combine the two acronyms (who working in education doesn't want fewer acronyms?), but DIRTI just doesn't convey the clean interest I have in both. 
     Why do I think they are so related? Because they both focus on providing instruction that is based on individuals' and small groups' disparate needs. In Buffum et al's (2009) Pyramid Response to Intervention: RTI, Professional Learning Communities, and How to Respond When Kids Don't Learn, the authors make a great case for differentiating instruction within the core curriculum (aka, Tier 1). As they put it, "a Tier 1 curriculum must be prioritized so that students have ample opportunity to master power standards" (p. 74). And as we know in education, the same opportunity to master a power standard will not work well for all students. Therefore, it's important to differentiate instruction even in Tier 1, instead of considering Tiers 2 and 3 to "count" for differentiation.
     Buffum et al (2009) warn us that the two biggest challenges we face in incorporating differentiation into our Tier 1 (or core curriculum -- the curriculum that all students receive and that should, according to RTI research, effectively reach about 80% of a given student population) are classroom management and the selection of quality instructional activities, especially those that students can complete independently (p. 75). And so, I consider these two pieces to be excellent starting points in thinking about and planning for a classroom that incorporates differentiated instruction. In upcoming blogs, I'll be diving into both areas, especially in light of DI. I'll also be exploring how Understanding by Design (or UBD -- oh good, another acronym!) fits into these practices as well, thanks to a great book co-authored by Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe called -- you guessed it -- Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design.
     I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes instructional innovations or initiatives really can and do naturally overlap, especially when they are based in strong pedagogy. The task of the educator is to not become overwhelmed by DI, RTI, UBD, and other acronyms being thrown his or her way, but to make sense of these theories and ideas about instruction by looking for their common elements. Sounds like a starting point to me! 

RTI: "Really Terrific Instruction," or Something More...?

     I just finished reading Rachel Brown-Chidsey and Mark W. Steege's second edition of Response to Intervention: Principles and Strategies for Effective Practice (2010). Now, while I learned a lot about how to implement an RTI model in a school or district from this book, and will most likely blog about some of the strategies outlined at a later date, for today I'd like to tackle one phrase that is used not only in this text, but that I have seen used several times in connection with writings about RTI, namely that, in addition to standing for Response to Intervention, RTI can just be thought of as "really terrific instruction."
     Now I won't lie. When I see this in print, it (initially) makes me feel great. And it echoes my own sentiments when I first read a new text about RTI. I find myself thinking, "Yes. Data-based instruction. This is just what good teachers have always done, and now we call it RTI." I've had countless conversations with educational colleagues about RTI and other initiatives that carry the same tone -- "Oh, we can do this. This is easy. We've already been doing this forever." And while these thoughts can ease the stress that creeps up with a new initiative, something always lingers at the back of my brain, nagging me.
     What nags me is this -- I don't really think RTI (or many other initiatives) are all that easy, or just come down to really terrific instruction. And I don't think we are doing our profession a favor by consistently trying to make them seem easy. Some of this is really complicated stuff. But that's okay. It should be. We educators work in a really complicated field. We are professionals, and, as such, we can delve into some really complicated stuff together and learn and grow. When we tell ourselves and our colleagues that a certain initiative is going to be easy to implement or that it's just "common-sense teaching," that can serve to isolate our profession. What teacher, when hearing these types of statements, is going to come forward and say, "Actually, I've been struggling with RTI. It's pretty tough to implement, and I need some help"? Most will just become insecure, blaming a false sense of incompetence. And -- worse -- give up on the new initiative before it's had a chance to succeed.
     So, I have a challenge for myself and for my fellow educators: let's stop trying to make some things seem easier than what they are. Let's admit that some things -- like progress monitoring all the students in one class on a daily and weekly and monthly basis, and then using that data to try a variety of instructional strategies and interventions to teach a variety of students, and then switching up those strategies when some don't work in order to teach each student in the best way possible -- yes, things like that aren't easy. And maybe shouldn't be. But, if we admit these challenges together we can being to fully meet them together. Sounds like a goal to me. I will continue to blog about RTI and about other instructional initiatives and strategies as I study them and learn about them. But I will not sugarcoat them with platitudes. Nor will I give up on them. I will work and collaborate with colleagues to determine the best ways to make them work for our students.