Moments from my day

I haven't posted on one of my learning walks in some time, so here's what I saw today (Tuesday).

Blackberry: During a math workshop, some students worked on the problem "I have two cows, two hens, and two ducks. I want to put boots on all of their feet. How many boots do I need?", which gets at counting by groups. Others used beads and pipe-cleaners to make 100s chains.

Laurel: As part of their ongoing Ant Study, students shared the multi-media images of ant farms they had created, and discussed what aspects of the pieces were realistic to actual ant farms.

Sweet Briar: 2nd grade students had a word study lesson drawn from Words Their Way, the developmentally-based approach we are using K-5. They began by reviewing various letter combinations that make long "a" sounds (_ai_, _a_e, and _ay), and then moved onto a word sort for either the long "o" sound (_o_e, _oa_, etc) or initial consonant sounds (_ell, _ill, _oll).

Temescal: During a writing workshop, students worked on drafting new pieces, editing and revising work previously begun, and adding illustrations to pieces at various stages of completion.

Strawberry: Half the students were working on their Fort Ross historical fiction assignments, while the other half was in music practicing for the winter holiday concert.

Cerrito: A spirited discussion of the pros and cons of writing collaboratively, using clips from a recent episode of The Simpsons as a foil. As Mike wrote on the Cerrito Creek blog, "Today was also the first day I have ever shown an episode of The Simpsons in writers workshop, or any TV show for that matter, especially one aired on Fox. Fear not, it was tied intricately to our study of the writer's life, and how books get made. When I caught this episode over Thanksgiving, I couldn't help myself, I had to show it to the students to help them think critically about what they read. Check it out this evening and get a good, deep laugh. We all need it!"

That's autonomy, interdependence, critical thinking, creativity, communication, technological proficiency, and discipline understanding in visible action - seven of our nine learning outcomes.

What Makes a Great App? Redux

My mom, who is the school psychologist at a residential/day school for autistic children in Massachusetts, also has an iPad. She's looking at educational apps both for her school site, and also to engage with my nieces who live nearby, so we're constantly sharing apps. After reading my blog post from Sunday, she sent me to the Math: Evolve website, which I thought I'd share. From the short video on the site (posted below), it seems like a cross between Spore, Galaga, and a dynamically-responsive math app - not necessarily constructivist, but interesting.

What Makes a Great App?

I have an iPad, and I have learned to love it. When I first was given the iPad by TBS, I had many complaints - the digital keyboard chief among them - and I didn't see how it would be a useful or relevant tool in support of my work to improve student learning. It was more like a toy, with a few useful features to my work as an administrator, including the Camera app (which allows me to easily shoot video in class) and the Notepad app (which allow my notes to instantly become digital, instead of having to retype them later).

I still have many questions about the iPad's effectiveness as a teaching tool for students. There are several good apps that help develop early literacy skills for PreK-1st grade students, and there are several good apps that develop problem solving skills, such as TinkerBox (choice quote from this app's homepage: "TinkerBox is more than just educational!"). However, the majority of the "educational games" apps I have come across targeting 2nd-6th grade students seem more geared towards rote memorization; an example is Math Ninja, which is basically for practicing operations and math facts.

That's why I was extremely excited to stumble upon Toontastic this week. In this app, players build stories one scene at a time, following the classic pattern of Setup, Conflict, Challenge, Climax, and Resolution. They add in characters, settings and actions to create the narrative arc, record original narration and/or dialogue to move the story forward, and select from the type and intensity of background music to reinforce the emotional force of the plot. The program is pre-loaded with many character and background options (with more available for purchase), and a drawing program that allows students to create their own as well. It also comes with a Parent Guide, which is basically a teaching guide that includes questions to pose to children as they work on their stories.

I was intrigued enough by this app to go online and check out the website, which did not disappoint. There is a page on the site called "Learning Goals", which has perfect resonance to the idea of understanding goals in the Teaching for Understanding framework for unit creation we have learned about from Project Zero. What made me especially excited was the combination of ideas that the developers of this app are drawing upon; play, constructionism, social development, and story structure. I am excited to see developers looking for ways to leverage the iPad technology in service of learning, rather than simply trying to come up with more palatable ways for children to learn math facts than flash cards and pencil-and-paper repetition.

Do you/your child have a favorite educational app that fits our goal of providing a constructivist approach to teaching and learning? If so, please tell me about it in the comments field.

Promoting the Performing Arts

It is critically important to continue to look for new ways to promote the arts, and arts thinking, at TBS. We have a robust and powerful studio arts program, thanks to Julianne and Benicia, and in its second year of existence our elementary music program has begun to find solid footing through the dual paths of Eve's music class and the optional strings program run by Irene. But there are more opportunities for us to explore as we pursue the learning outcome of creativity with and for our students.

This morning I spoke on the phone with Avilee Goodwin. Avilee has been teaching dance in various public schools in the East Bay for 15 years and in private studios for almost 30 years, and possesses both an M.A. in Creative Arts (emphasis dance) from San Francisco State University, and a state teaching credential in P.E. with a dance concentration. Avilee's approach is to teach dance "from the inside out", using a discovery approach through exploration of the basic dance elements of Space, Time, and Energy. Rather than force students to simply learn steps or routines, Avilee teaches them deeper concepts such as line, shape, path, range, level, tempo, rhythm, and weight; just as strong number sense allows students to move from counting to addition to multiplication across the elementary grades, so does Avilee's teaching give students the underlying understandings necessary to develop their skills as dancers. Clearly this is not the indoor winter unit on square dancing we all experienced in our own elementary educations! This conversation made me excited to continue to look at the possibilities around adding dance to our elementary program.

This afternoon I spoke with internationally known composer and musician Paul Dresher. We first learned of Paul last spring, when our 2/3 classes went to see, hear, and experience a program he had created called the Shick Machine, and subsequently had some of his assistants visit our classrooms with their hand-built instruments. That experience led to a conversation about a sustained collaboration between Paul and our school, and we are excited to be welcoming Paul and his crew to TBS beginning in January for a six week program working on instrument building, and the concepts and physics of sound, with our 4th and 5th grade students. While figuring out how to jigger the schedule and spaces to meet the program's needs is a challenge, it is one we gladly take on in order to provide our students with this incredible, hands-on experience.

More links I've shared with faculty

Since a few people mentioned enjoying seeing the links I sent to faculty last week, here's a collection that I push out to people this week.

K/1 learning habits

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-school-reform-targets-early-lessons/2011/11/04/gIQAGZ2VCN_story.html

K-2 math

http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/15/pbs-kids-launches-augmented-reality-game-for-ios-says-all-the-c/

K-5 Soc/Emo

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-emotional-learning-building-skills-maurice-elias

K-5 spelling

http://www.dailypress.com/news/education/dp-nws-spelling-tests-banned-20111114,0,4523242,full.story

K-8 arts

http://www.edutopia.org/blogs/connecting-stem-arts-jim-brazell

2/3 literature

http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20111115-NEWS-111150374

4-8 Science

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8886307/Super-slippery-material-could-mean-end-to-having-to-wait-for-ketchup.html

6-8 math and science

http://whatworks.wholechildeducation.org/blog/sixth-grader-builds-iphone-apps-and-sparks-learning-in-school/

Step-Up Tour and differentiation

Today we had 40-50 parents of currently enrolled students go on a "Step-up Tour" at TBS, in which they were given opportunities to observe in the classrooms at the next grade level. I was charged with leading the ECC parents, beginning with 30 minutes in the K/1 classrooms, and then moving into the 2/3, 4/5, and middle school classrooms.

One of the questions I was asked during the tour stuck out: given our mixed grade classrooms in the elementary division, how do we ensure that children in the upper grade of each classroom are getting the challenge that they need, besides time as mentors and coaches for the younger students? This question resonated with my understanding of a historical narrative that parents of students in the youngest of a three-grade Montessori group tend to be very satisfied, b/c they can quite literally see the challenge available in the classroom; parents of students in the middle of a three-grade Montessori group tend to be somewhat satisfied, b/c they can still see the challenge available in the classroom; and parents of students in the oldest year of a three-grade Montessori group are sometimes dissatisfied with what they perceive as a lack of challenge.

My response to the question in the moment was that there are times when the ideas and work that are being presented are pitched to the more competent students, and that rather than assuming that the work is all directed at the "middle of the pack," or youngest, or least competent students, there will be times when some students are watching and seeing work that is within the zone of proximal development for the older or more capable students, and that a different version of that work is what is appropriately suited for them - and, that seeing another child take on work beyond what one can do is a strong motivator for learning the necessary knowledge and skills (though of course we have to be careful that kids don't "shut down" when they try something beyond their abilities). This answer was nicely complimented by one that Kyla O'Neill, K/1 teacher in Blackberry Creek, gave during the teacher panel at the end of the tour that it is the work of the teacher to carefully consider the development of each child and design experiences that are engaging for all students.

What I wish I had added then, and have been thinking about since, is that much of the time, the instruction and activities are designed to allow for inherent differentiation according to the understanding of the children. For example, the process of writing number sentences to document a student's thinking about a particular problem ("if each person has two arms and two legs, how many limbs does this group of 11 students have in total?" is one I witnessed in a K/1 class last week) can contain single digit addends representing each item to be counted (1+1+1+1...), single addends that represent groups of counted items (2 legs per person, and 2 arms per person, so 2+2+2+2... or, 4 limbs per person, so 4+4+4...), or many other various regroupings that "stack" ideas of addition (5 boys have 4 limbs each (4+4+4+4+4=20), and 6 girls have four limbs each (24), so 20+24=44). What you won't see is a teacher telling children "Here's the RIGHT way to solve the problem", because there is no one right way; having a developmental approach means taking the time to have each child express his/her understanding, and give them opportunities to see how other children express their understanding, and encourage them to experiment with those more complex strategies.

This is different from the use of structured differentiation in our classrooms - when teachers ask a child to approach a certain piece of work, perhaps in a certain way. Using the example above, a teacher might ask a specific child or children to use groupings to write a number sentence using only double-digit addends (such as 20+24), or not using the same addend twice (4+8+12+20), or even using multiplication (4 x 11), based on the teacher's assessment of the child's understanding of number sense and operations. In both cases, the child is being appropriately challenged at the developmental level, rather than by standardized markers of "product".

CAIS/WASC accreditation training

I spent much of today in a training session for the joint CAIS/WASC self-study that we will be undertaking next year, held at The Trinity School in Menlo Park. Along with around 30 participants from a variety of schools in the Bay Area, I had the opportunity to listen to and learn from Jim McManus, Teal Gallagher, and a variety of other members of the California Association of Independent Schools go over various parts of the process, and give insight and tips they have gathered over the years.

The conversation began with a brief overview of the history of accreditation. I had not known that up until the 1960s, universities and colleges directly accredited independent schools, and that it was during the '60s that resources were pooled to form six regional accrediting bodies across the country. This was followed by a review of the values assumed in accreditation (self-reflection, observations and judgments of professional peers, and an ethic of continuing improvement), the tensions accreditation brings to a school (a feeling of invasion compared to a growth opportunity; balancing the unique mission of a school with the adherence to general professional standards; spending minimal time necessary to complete the task with cultivating depth of thought), and the many benefits accreditation brings to a school, including the generation and analysis of information and moments of truth, professional feedback, the presence of a catalyst for improvement, and the marketing dimensions.

The training continued with a review of the timeline of accreditation tasks; the structures of committees; the structure of the self-study; and the on-site visit by the Visiting Committee. It was interesting to hear the challenges that were named in this section, including a) an under- or over-involved Head (since the Head should not be the Self-Study Coordinator), b) the presence of a rogue community member who is looking for a Supreme Court to reverse a particular decision with which s/he is unhappy, c) team and time management, since the three-day visit goes at breakneck speed (which I can attest to, in my lived experience on a WASC committee last spring), and d) the need to manage a desire to hear what length of term the visiting committee will recommend, on the part of the school.

The training concluded with a reasonable suggestion for a process by which the entire self-study can be generated using only Google Docs, and thereby reducing clerical time and paper consumption; information about the product that the Visiting Committee produces, including a 10-12 page "Documentation and Justification Statement" that defends the committee's recommendation of an accreditation term length to the CAIS Board of Directors; and a Q&A. Advice included how to meld the self-study with strategic planning; providing time for faculty to work on this instead of other things; having the Self-Study Coordinator remain positive and upbeat throughout the process; and best practices for structuring committee chairs.

Nice Guys Finish Last

I shared this article from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern about leadership with Mark and Judy of Triangle Associates, the co-facilitators of the NAIS Fellowship for Aspiring Heads week in Atlanta that was so inspiring and transformative for me this summer. It has an interesting take on the idea of personal dominance and projection that is incorporated into the SymLOG tool, which I wrote about last month. This idea came up for me again this week when I was writing a column for next week's NewsNotes, and I was told to "toot my own horn" more in terms of my work with faculty and my role in the school. I am simultaneously very reluctant to do so - a reluctance heightened by my awareness that I can sound arrogant and condescending - with an understanding that there are times when I need to assert my vision and understanding of a situation within my role as a school leader. It's a workout for me to be able to be assertive without being aggressive, and to be directive when I prefer to be democratic!

Links I've shared with faculty recently

I'm often passing articles and websites on to faculty. Sometimes it's in direct response to a request from a faculty member for help in researching a topic or finding resources; other times it's related to a piece of work I've observed in the classroom; and occasionally it's simply something I think they will find interesting, for an assortment of reasons. Here's a collection of six sites I've sent around in the last week that cohere around the latter category.

K-5 service learning:

http://www.freethechildren.org

K-8 literacy:

Just got this link to the first chapter of a new book about how reading instruction pitched towards standardized tests is destroying students' actual love of reading, and thought I'd share it.

http://www.stenhouse.com/emags/0780-1/pageflip.html

I was especially interested in the idea of separated, simulated, and integrated curriculum discussed in the final pages of the chapter - an interesting lens through which to look at our practices of instruction.

4-6 math:

http://games.cs.washington.edu/refraction/

4-8 math:

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/11/some-help-with-solving-the-rubix-cube/

6-8 science:

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/11/what-do-wii-remotes-have-to-do-with-science-ask-sixth-graders

6-8 advisory:

http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/8615373-418/aurora-teens-learn-social-media-can-backfire.html

One day, three great meetings

Who loves meetings? I did today.

In the first meeting, Diane (Dir. of Advancement), Paula (Dir. of Admissions) and I planned a Mid-year New Parent Orientation event we're holding on Monday for the several families that have started at TBS since the school year began. Besides coming up with what we think is a very interesting and creative way to cover the information with families without talking at them (and one that I think we can use in future years), we simply had great synergy in sharing ideas, building off each other's ideas, and volunteering to take on roles and responsibilities.

In the second meeting, Kate Klaire (recess/social facilitation and EGG director), Danette Swan (2/3 teacher in Sweet Briar Creek) and I met to discuss the results of a Faculty Culture Profile survey that I had K-5 teachers complete during our division meeting two weeks ago. Using the tabulated data as a launching point, we were able to share our thoughts and wonders about the issues challenging our division, from the level of trust faculty hold in each other, to the nature of their casual conversations, to ways to make the division's meetings more worthwhile, to the consequences of the overload we all experience. While there was no single action item to result from this meeting, the opportunity to involve faculty (an open invitation was issued to all division faculty to attend this meeting) in helping me think through the next steps of conversations and activities for the faculty to do together was invaluable.

In the final meeting of the day, the entire faculty gathered after school to continue the curriculum review process that is the major all-faculty initiative of the year, building on our work last year of establishing school-wide learning outcomes. After a brief whole-group review of where we are in the process that we've designed for the year, we split into four small groups to share our observations about the "forward maps" that all faculty have created to guide their curriculum this year. In the small group in which I participated - with Danette, Missy (ECC), Kyla (K/1), Stephen (4/5), Marcella (6th), and Benicia (6-8) - we struggled at first to create a process to follow, but once we decided not to try to order our thoughts, and to just let them out as we felt moved to do so (compared to other groups, which decided to move methodically by either discipline strand, or grade level), our conversation picked up steam. Although the structure of the meeting was set up to follow the See Think Wonder thinking routine across this and the next meeting (since the amount of data on the maps is overwhelming to process), my group couldn't contain itself to sharing just observations of similarities and overlap, and spilled over into various questions such as, if we can all agree on the general topic or idea to plug into each box in the map at a given grade level, can we then give teachers autonomy around the implementation within the context of our shared pedagogic practices? And, are there disciplines in which we might want to be more regimented than that, and lay out all content by grade and sequence more tightly (examples of math, and ECC through 2nd grade reading were given as possibilities)? And, similar to the earlier meetings, what made this experience so great was the active role each and every participant took in contributing to our collective understanding and perception.

I don't know how many times in my life I'll say that I had three great meetings in one day!

School Assembly #2

Today we hosted our second all-school assembly of the year. Because it was cold at 9:00 - and, there were backhoes digging up Addison St right behind the school - we held this assembly in the newly remodeled Depot. While it was a tight squeeze to get all the students in a position where they could see the front of the room, I think we actually fit in better than we had in the past, given the open layout of the North Gallery, and the aesthetics of the space felt really wonderful.

Since Mitch was off campus, I opened the assembly with a welcome and a clapping activity: clap once it you went trick or treating on Halloween, twice if you went to a party, three times if you wore a different costume in the evening than you wore in the parade during the day, four times if you watched a scary movie, five times if you know your costume for next year (at which most K-3s clapped, but very few 4th-8th graders clapped!), six times if Halloween is your favorite holiday, and seven times if you have a different favorite holiday (the majority clapped here). I then quickly discussed how I had met with teachers to redesign assemblies, and our thinking that this would be a great time to learn about each other, and what other students in the school are learning, and turned it over to Kate Klaire and the Student council. The kids did a wonderful job explaining their work - everyone spoke on the mic, from the youngest 1st grader to the oldest 5th grader - and then they put on some short skits to demonstrate the ideas they were discussing. And at the end, as a reminder to keep recess fun, they threw confetti onto the crowd!

To close the assembly, Eve Decker, our K-6 music and 6-8 drama teacher, then led the school through "The Witches" by Bonnie Lockhart, a song that the K-6 students had all learned in the last month of classes. Hearing the kids roar the song was great, and another example of how our increased intentionality around all aspects of the assemblies, from activities to song choice, has had instant payoff.

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain

I just finished reading this incredible book, which thoroughly lays out the research into neuroscience presented at the 2004 Mind and Life Institute hosted by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

This research has lead to the discovery of neuroplasticity - the ability of the brain to generate new cells throughout a person's life, as well as the ability to heal and renew itself after trauma, and compensate for disability. For example, areas of the brain responsible for processing visual input can get repurposed for processing auditory input in people who have gone blind, and stroke victims can learn to walk and talk again even if the areas of the brain initially responsible for those activities are damaged.

The book also investigates the relationship between mental activity and brain function. Every thought that occurs in the mind has a corresponding physiological event (synapsis firing) in the brain; as I understand it, while the scientific community once approached this as a one-way street, focusing only on brain function, the research now shows that thinking can influence brain activity. The implications for this in the realm of mental and emotional health are staggering; if we can train our minds to think in certain ways, it will strengthen the neural networks that support those emotions, and weaken the ones that support the emotions we don't wish to experience. Research has already been done showing the ability of the mind to break cycles of depression and OCD behavior; the Buddhist traditions of mindfulness and meditation point towards the power of mental training to give individuals the tools and ability to cultivate their minds as they wish them to be, for healthier and happier lives.

As an individual, I'm firmly convinced in the promise of these ideas, and have begun working on developing my own practice of mindfulness. One of my first steps is reading Fully Present, which looks at the science and art of mindfulness, and also provides pragmatic guidance and activities to develop my practice of mindfulness. As an educator, I'm trying to understand the significance of this research for school-age students, and wondering what it would look like to integrate this into the TBS program.

We laugh because we see the kernels of truth beneath the humor

Many thanks to The New Yorker magazine for this hilarious column.

The pursuit of knowing myself

I found this post on the Harvard Business Review to be helpful in a very pragmatic sense, as well as confirming the importance for me of intentionally working to improve my EQ, and the role this plays in leadership. The idea of "knowing your triggers" is one that I have been working on this fall, as part of my attempt to drive up my EQ - it's another way of saying "recognize your patterns", one of the two dimensions that is important within the pursuit of knowing yourself.

Why is it that certain people seem to simply "push our buttons"? I don't know, but I do now know that I can rewire that button, and even disconnect it. By keeping a reflection journal this fall, I've been able to identify various individuals within the school to whom I have strong emotional reactions that sabotage my ability to work with those people. For example, I have worked hard this fall to respond to a faculty member with patience and trust, instead of annoyance and contempt. I was never proud of having those feelings toward this person -- well, in point of fact I also didn't really understand I was having them until I developed my emotional literacy (another critical aspect of the pursuit of knowing yourself), but I knew that our interactions always left me feeling tense and exhausted. By increasing my ability to name the emotions I was experiencing, and then tracking them closely throughout my day, I came to understand that I was constantly responding to this person with these emotions. And, since that was not how I wanted to respond, I began being aware of whenever I was beginning to have those feelings during conversations. When this occurred, I asked myself why or what about the conversation was leading to those, and then addressed that issue -- which may have been an assumption I had, or perceived the other person to have, or something else -- either out loud, with that person, or in silently in my own head. By going to the source of those proto-emotions, I was able to catch them before they undermined me.

I'm definitely at various stages of this work in regards to different people. Just this week I was able to identify that I am responding to, and approaching, one member of the faculty from a position of fear. While I have had plenty of successful and positive interactions with this person, I am now ready to begin work on noticing and putting aside my fear during our interactions, rather than allowing it to drive my words and actions - especially since, when it does, I don't perform well!