Sometimes Questions are More Important Than Answers

Each year,  I spend some time setting goals.  One of my goals this year is learning how to ask better questions.  Asking great questions leads to much more thinking than almost anything else.  The September 2015 Educational Leadership journal has devoted the entire issue to Questioning for Learning.  Much of the work mentioned in this post comes from articles by Marge Scherer and Grant Wiggins.

Leonard Mlodinow is a famous physicist.  In his book The Upright Thinkers he recounts a conversation he had with his father who was a Holocaust survivor. While in the Buchenwald concentration camp, a fellow innate showed him a math puzzle.  Intrigued, his father, who had only a 7th grade education himself, tried to solve the puzzle, but could not.  When he asked for the explanation, the mathematician offered a deal ---the solution for a crust of bread.  "my father's need to know was so powerful, he parted with his bread in exchange for the answer," Mlodinow writes (p.3).

Humans have the unique propensity to think and question.  How can educators learn how to encourage students to ask their own questions, and explore answers?  Innovators ask questions.  According to Warren Berger in his book A More Beautiful Question, the question, "What if we put wheels on it?" led to the rolling suitcase.  "What if Morse code could be adapted graphically?" led to the creation of the bar code.  "Why did my candy bar melt?" led to the invention of the microwave oven.  Here are some tips to help ask better questions.

1. Ask questions that may be answered many ways. Good questions are divergent.  They are sometimes unanswerable or have multiple possibilities.

2. Ask questions that invite argument and debate. Arguments involve unsettled issues of understanding or application.

3. Will the  pursuit in answer of the question lead to a Big Idea? A good question will take you to the core issues and insights of a topic. A good question has to be more than just intriguing.

4. Ask questions that can be used across disciplines. For example, after reading Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad series, a question may be asked: How do Frog and Toad act like friends?  A better version of this question would be this---Who is a true friend?  This version connects to varied texts and to personal experience.

5. Does the question get at what's odd, counterintuitive, or easily misunderstood?  A common question teachers ask is What the difference between fiction and nonfiction?  A better version of this would be ----When is fiction revealing, and when is it a lie?

6. Am I trying too hard to craft the perfect question?  Asking a good question takes practice.  Use brainstorming techniques and draft webs of related questions.

7. Am I looking for questions in all the wrong places?  To aim for understanding is to aim for three kinds of learning:  acquisition, meaning making, and transfer.  What problems will prompt learners to inquiry?  So instead of asking students to compare and contrast mean, median, and mode ask,  "What's the fairest ways to calculate grades?"

High level questions yield a high level of student inquiry.  As Claude Levi-Strauss once said, "The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.

Dedicated to Diane

 

June 26 marked the last day of my friend Diane's career as an assistant principal of a k-6 elementary school. I was happy for her, but so sad for the children who will never experience her unique methods.  I worked with Diane when I had the privilege of being the principal in a beautiful old school that was well maintained and filled with pride.  She was my assistant principal.

 

Public schools are microcosms of communities.  They are small neighborhoods, and as such, the teachers, the students and their parents were our neighbors.  We celebrated their weddings, played with their babies, mourned their deaths, cheered on their victories, and kept their secrets.  Being in charge of a community gives you great power---and with great power comes great responsibility.  We worked hard to keep our neighborhood in good shape.  Our hallways sparkled, our teachers collaborated and our students worked hard.

Teaching is one of the most human of careers.  It is really all about relationships. We have to build connections. It was our school's great fortune that this was Diane’s greatest strength.
One of Diane’s main responsibilities was discipline.  Despite all of our combined efforts, some students in our neighborhood insisted on testing their limits.  Diane had an interesting way with the students.  She did not want to impose any random consequence.  She always wanted to teach a lesson and build a child’s character. She wanted students to show remorse if they did something they shouldn’t have. Sometimes I really didn’t know how she did it.  One day I walked into her office where she was holding after school detention.  Instead of studying, she was feeding this fifth grader baked ziti.  Somehow, I know her system worked.

One year we had a very challenging kindergarten class.  The group did not like to follow rules and challenged us at every turn.  While the teacher was working with a reading group, two boys painted each other blue.  The next week one boy took off all his clothes on the bus.  A week after that one child dropped his book bag while walking to the bus at afternoon dismissal.  The bus driver got off the bus to help the student.  No sooner had he stepped off the bus then a kindergartner who had already boarded jumped in his seat, and pulled the lever to close the bus.  There he was ---a beaming six year old in the driver’s seat ready to put the bus in gear, with 10 of his buddies cheering him on.  Two weeks after that, the kindergarten toilet overflowed.  Someone had shoved some blocks down the bowl and a small flood was the result.  This was the last straw for Diane.  She marched into the kindergarten class snapping a new pair of latex gloves onto her hands.  “Who here has ever watched CSI on TV?” she bellowed.  A few hands went up.  “Well,” she said, “those people taught me how to take fingerprints.  I am going to get the fingerprints off those blocks and I’m going to find out who did this.  Then I’m going to call CSI.”  One boy jumped up and cried, “Please don’t send me to jail.  It was me!” Diane quietly walked him out of the room into her office.  I was worried that she would just give him a plate of ziti, so I left right after I watched him dial his mother’s phone number.
Diane’s methods remind me of the culture of a rural tribe in Africa:

When a woman in this tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the unborn child. They recognize that every soul has its own vibration that expresses its unique flavor and purpose. When the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud.  Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else. When the child is born, the community gathers and sings the child's song to him or her. Later, when the child enters school, the village gathers and chants the child's song. When the child passes through the initiation to adulthood, the people again come together and sing. At the time of marriage, the person hears his or her song once again. Finally, when the soul is about to pass from this world, the family and friends gather at the person's bed, just as they did at their birth, and they sing the person to the next life. To the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them. The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another. Diane has always been able to help students recognize their own special song. A friend is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it. Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused. Sometimes when we meet with our students, including our very own sons and daughters, we tell them we are not their friends.  We are their teachers and parents and we demand their attention.  But we must remember, that when we discipline another soul, we must think with our head, but lead with our hearts.  We must, as a true friend, remind our children of their songs.
You may not have grown up in an African tribe that sings your song to you at crucial life transitions, but life is always reminding you when you are in tune with yourself and when you are not. When you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn't.  Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, and show our soft underbelly of our humanity.  It is my hope that we shall all recognize our own song and sing it well.

Thank you Diane for always reminding us of our own songs and for whistling these tunes to our children  for so many years.  Your very big heart has embraced us all.  Much luck to you whatever you do.

Making Decisions is Hard

Making decisions is hard.  When you are making decisions that affect the lives of others, the process becomes even more challenging. Sometimes we can suffer from decision paralysis.
An ethical dilemma case was presented to a group of physicians.  The problem was created by Donald Redelmeier, a physician, and Eldar Shafir, a psychologist. The physicians were asked to consider the medical records of a 67- year old patient who had chronic hip pain from arthritis. The patient had been given drugs to treat his pain, but they had been ineffective, so the doctor was forced to consider a more drastic option:  hip -replacement surgery.  Recovery from this is long and painful. Then came an unexpected surprise.  A final check with the patient’s pharmacy uncovered one medication that had not been tried.  Now the doctor faced a dilemma:  Should he prescribe the untried medication, even though the other medications had failed, or should he go ahead and refer the patient for surgery?

 

When doctors were presented with this case history, 47% of them chose to try the medication , in hopes of saving the patient from surgery and hospitalization.

Another group of doctors were presented with almost exactly the same set of case facts, except this time, the patient’s pharmacy discovered two untried medications.  But when the doctors were presented with two medications, only 28% chose to try either one.  This doesn’t make sense. The doctors were acting as if having more medication options somehow made medication a worse option than surgery.

This is a perfect example of decision paralysis. More options, even good ones, can freeze us up and make us retreat.

Here’s another example of this:  In a gourmet food store, a display table showcased 6 different types of jams for sampling. At another time, they displayed 24 jams.  Although the 24 jam display attracted more customers,  shoppers who saw only 6 jams on display were 10 times more likely to purchase the jam.

In schools, administrators and teachers have to make dozens of decisions every day.  One of the most important decisions we have to make is on curriculum.  Research is clear that when we are crystal clear on what we have to teach, we are the most effective.  Collaborative curriculum planning must be done  to plan a road map that is easy to follow.  If we offer no directions, we will wind up with decision paralysis—often resulting in behavior and practices that are well worn, comfortable, and sadly,  ineffective.

Much of this material was adapted from the book Switch–How to Change Things When Change is Hard  by Chip and Dan Heath

Don't Take Away Tenure

Some of the material in this post was adapted from an article by Karen E. Magee in the timesunion.com newspaper.


Most people outside of the education world are very confused about tenure.  They think it means that a teacher cannot be fired.  This is NOT what tenure means nor was tenure put in place for this purpose.  Tenure entitles teachers to due process to a fair hearing before an impartial third party if a district seeks to discipline or fire a teacher.  This is the same protection given to police officers, firefighters, and other public servants.   It prevents teachers from being dismissed as a result of an arbitrary or capricious whim.


In  most districts, everyone,  except employees hired under civil service and the superintendent, is eligible for tenure.  In New York State teachers and administrators earn tenure after a three-year probationary period. In public education, teachers, administrators, and other school staff must be free to speak out on important issues without fear of reprisal.  Teachers and administrators must be able to advocate for their students without fearing they can be arbitrarily dismissed for doing so.


Picture what would happen if teachers---maybe even your child's teacher---could be fired at will.  Currently, teachers are voicing their opinions about excessive standardized testing.  They are able to ask about budgets and budget cuts.  Most importantly, in communities where rising property taxes are triggering loud opposition, they don't have to worry that their school board will simply lay off the most expensive teachers---even if they happen to be the best and most experienced---so that the district saves money. 


Tenure has been loudly criticized because it has become such a burden to discipline or fire a teacher.  In New York that process has been streamlined.  In 2012 the law was amended to require all disciplinary hearings to be completed within five months.  Most cases are settled before it gets that far.


Tenure allows teachers to teach and administrators to do their jobs.  It creates an atmosphere of academic freedom--an environment in which the entire school community will thrive.

Open the GATE

    

Much of the material here is adapted from an article by Walt Gardner from November 14, 2011.


GATE or Gifted and Talented Education needs some attention in this country. According to the National Association for Gifted Children or NAGC (2007) just two cents of every $100 of Federal money in education is given to gifted education.


     What is gifted education?  Who does it target?  That is up to individual states and individual districts.  Different school districts do different things.  Only 5 states in the US require any training in gifted education. Except for Massachusetts and South Dakota all states have a definition of giftedness, but very few states provide resources and programs for the gifted. 
    
     Only in the U.S. are gifted children treated as stepchildren. Despite their growing numbers, which are now estimated at 3 million, they have no strong lobbies in Congress. As a result, they remain underresourced and underchallenged even though they are a national treasure. A report by the National Association for Gifted Children found that the brightest students are falling behind their international peers on math and reading tests ("Brightest Stall, Low Achievers Gain," The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 12). This squandering of talent is hard to understand and even harder to defend.

Up until the 1990s, gifted students were taught in separate classes. But this approach was considered elitist. Consequently, they began to be mainstreamed. However, even before then, the only initiative at the federal level to provide resources for states was the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act. Although it was passed in 1988, it largely languished in the shadows. Passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, which focused almost exclusively on the lowest performing students, further hastened its obscurity. According to the National Association for Gifted Children, only 31 states require schools to identify gifted students, and just 23 earmark funding for them.


     Gifted students require differentiated instruction.  They should be taught by teachers with certification in methods proven to be effective with this population just as special education students are.  It is not elitist.  Appropriate education is different from equal education. About 3-5% of any given population will be gifted.  Right now our population is approximately 318 million people.  That means there may be about 15,900,000 gifted people here.    Now consider China.  They have a population of 1.3 billion. Their gifted population is 65 million or about a fifth of our entire population. Contrary to the American system of education, China spends a great deal of money identifying students who are gifted and providing them with great resources to develop those gifts.


     We should be identifying our gifted students and providing them with opportunities and instruction in leadership, academics, character education, and the arts.  They are our most precious resource.  They are the future of our country. I would not want the brightest people in the world to have no schooling in character ed. or leadership or citizenship.  Would you?

Budgets and Baloney or Put Your Money Where your Mouth Is

During the last few years New York schools have had to create budgets under the constraints of a tax levy limitation law. For most districts this has translated to a budget increase of about 2%.

If you consider the rising costs of insurance, fuel, and transportation, districts have had to make troubling cuts to program to keep their budgets in line.

A new report funded by the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now being published identifying 10 key ways that schools can save money. The main report is titled "Spending Money Wisely: Getting the Most From School District Budgets" and is published by the District Management Council.

I was very interested in this report. I spend a great deal of time examining each line of our budget trying to save a buck without hurting our programs. I do this with a scalpel not a machete, but sometimes cuts have to be made.

Here is their advice:
1. Calculate Academic Return on Investment: A Powerful Tool and a Great Investment
Calculating the academic return on investment (A-ROI) provides the answers to critical questions such as: How much does that initiative cost? How much learning is being achieved? Is there a more cost-effective alternative for achieving the same or better results?

There is actually a formula for this:

increase in student learning X number of students helped
________________________________________________________
money spent
2. Managing student-enrollment projections to meet class-size targets

3. Evaluating and adjusting remediation and intervention staffing levels

4. Adopting politically acceptable ways to increase class size or teachers' workload

5. Spending federal entitlement grants to leverage their flexibility

6. Adopting more-efficient and higher-quality reading programs

7. Improving the cost-effectiveness of professional development

8. Rethinking how items are purchased

9. Lowering the cost of extended learning time

10. Targeting new investments by eliminating inefficient and unsuccessful strategies

Anyone involved in their district's budget process would be insulted by these recommendations. Take #6 for example. Do they think reading directors purposely select inefficient reading programs? I must include an aside here: Many of the reading programs and supplies being used in classrooms today are published by Pearson, a giant corporation that has been very involved in the reading reform movement. What is a high quality reading program? Identify one for me.

Let's take #4. Politically acceptable ways of increasing class size. We know that a first grade class size should not exceed 20. Very few districts can afford that practice, EVEN THOUGH WE KNOW IT IS EFFECTIVE.

This report is baloney. I understand fiscal responsibility and the sacred trust financial managers have when using taxpayer funds. Good education is expensive. So is poverty. Education is an investment just like a 403B or a portfolio fund. Acknowledge this fact. Then put your money where your mouth is...

For additional information on this topic please consult the "Doing More With Less" article in Education Week at the following link:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/05/07/30savings.h33.html

Doctor, Doctor---give me the cure...

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the dissertation defense of an old friend. I have never attended this process. Five professors fire questions at you after they have read your thesis and you have given an oral presentation of the theoretical framework, methodology, and results of your study.

I think I was sweating profusely as I listened to each question, probing her research and her methods. I was more nervous than she was. She had completed a fascinating literacy study about students in her class finding their identities. She had created a third space in her classroom. This is a relatively new term. Wikipedia says that Third Space theory emerges from the sociocultural tradition in psychology identified with Lev Vygotsky. In educational studies, a researcher named Maniotes examined literary Third Space in a classroom where students' cultural capital merged with content of the curriculum as students backed up their arguments in literature discussions.

I think of a Third Space as being a FREE space. Years ago, in Brooklyn, we played a street game called Ringaleevio. It was kind of like tag. During the game some random object was declared a FREE space. In my neighborhood, it was the black pump by the curb. If you were touching that pump during the game, you could not be tagged. It gave you a moment of respite, to catch your breath. I think that is what the Third Space does in the classroom as well.

Well, I continued to listen to the dissertation. There were videos and transcripts of conversations with children. My friend had lessons and reflections. Then she revealed that during the course of her work, she received an evaluation score from one of her administrators that was subpar. This was because she had veered too far away from the subscribed lessons of the school.

How sad. In front of me was a dedicated and brilliant young woman who had invested years trying to create a special atmosphere in her classroom and help her students discover themselves. Yet she was judged by her supervisor as being less than excellent...less than good. What kind of system have we created?

We must repeal the Performance Review system that judges teachers using their students' test scores and some very subjective data. Do we judge a dentist on his ability by how many cavities we get? Stop the tail from wagging the dog. Evaluate teachers on their comprehensive portfolio of the work they have accomplished with students, inspiring them, not testing them.