Can You Really Describe Good Teaching?

Do you have a great teacher in your school?  Several great teachers?   Teachers whose classes students can't wait to get into?   I think we all have those teachers.  Teachers who get the strongest endorsement that we can give--the "I want my own child to be in his/her class" endorsement.

But now you get asked "What makes Mrs. Smith a great Math teacher?".  What do you say?  

What really makes a 'great' teacher?  And at this point, I want to fully acknowledge that the antecedents of the craft of excellent teaching are multivariate and as a result there are many answers to this question.  But if you were asked by a Principal of another school that question--"What makes Mrs. Smith such a great Math teacher?"--words and phrases such as relationships, engagement, interactions, classroom management, flow-based challenge, feedback and formative assessment bounce around in our brains.  And while these may be things that we observe in Mrs. Smith's classes, I am wondering if we all make the same two mistakes (which I have on numerous occasions) when we answer this sort of question:

• We attempt to answer through a poetic waxing and decidedly unquantifiable description that includes many of the aforementioned attributes (and perhaps many others) of that teacher through our own lens of what we believe is important in good teaching.
• We fail to answer the question from the evidence-based perspective of the skills and attributes demonstrated by learner developed as a result of the tasks the teacher utilizes in their classes. 

Perhaps you do classroom walkthroughs as I try to do (and wish I did more often).  When we walk into our classrooms, are we really sure we know what we should be looking for?  Are we confident that we know these predicates of 'great' teaching?  Of 'great' learning?  And when we walk out of that classroom, what do we do with that information?  Do we tell the teacher "Great lesson!"?  Do we tell our colleagues that we have a crackerjack teacher down in Room 11 and continue the cycle of vague descriptions that prevent any form of replication for other teachers or other schools?

In April of last year, I connected with Jamie Robinson (@_jrobinson), Principal of Glenrosa Middle School in our neighbouring of Kelowna at a Ministry of Education Curriculum workshop.  He was excited to share the work he and his district had done around a book called Instructional Rounds in Education by Harvard researchers Elizabeth City, Richard Elmore, Sarah Fiarman and Lee Teitel.  Jamie has an excellent track record of taking what is written and turning it into action, and as a result, I bought the book immediately.  And after seeing Jamie and members of his district present at the BCSSA Conference last week about Instructional Rounds (IR), I was and continue to be blown away by the concepts laid out in this book and how the Kelowna School District is implementing them to positively impact student learning in their district.

To quote the jacket description on the back cover...

"Inspired by the medical-rounds model used by physicians, the authors of Instructional Rounds in Education have pioneered a new form of professional learning known as Instructional Rounds networks.  Through this process, education leaders and practitioners develop a shared understanding of what high quality instruction looks like and what schools and districts need to support it."

The Instructional Rounds concept is based in seven principles:

1. Increases in student learning occur only as a consequence of improvements in the level of content, teacher’s knowledge and skill, and student engagement.
2. If you change any single element of the instructional core, you have to change the other two.
3. If you can’t see it in the core, it’s not there.
4. Tasks predict performance.
5. The real accountability system is in the tasks that students are asked to do.
6. We learn to do things by doing the work.
7. Description before analysis, analysis before prediction, prediction before evaluation.

Through observation, teams comprised of district leaders, school-based administration, teachers and teacher leaders use evidence-based observation to draw correlates of effective practice as they relate to the tasks that the students are doing and the resultant skills being demonstrated.  And what's more, this is NOT an evaluative process, it is a LEARNING process for all of those involved in education from the teacher right on to the Superintendent.

I specifically highlighted two of the Principles of Instructional Rounds in the list above because they truly resonate with me.  From Instructional Rounds:

"In our experience working with teachers, principals. and system level administrators around problems of large-scale improvement, people tend to be much more specific about what they expect by way of student performance than they are about what in classrooms would lead to the performance that they desire." (p. 32)

How many times have we said that we want our students to be collaborative, to be creative thinkers, to be critical consumers of information and then hand out worksheets, assign problems, or assess using matching and multiple choice questions that require few or any of these skills?

The South Lane School District has adopted Instructional Rounds as a means to improve student and educator learning, and describes the process like this:

There is a lot of work that takes place before the team goes out to observe in classrooms. The team practiced the instructional rounds protocol with videos of classroom lessons. Identifying the “Problem of Practice” is essential to maximize the effectiveness of instructional rounds. The principal, with the help of a district team (superintendent, assistant superintendent and director), identifies their “problem of practice” and clearly describes that problem to the team before instructional rounds begin. The rounds process has teams of 3-4 staff observing in four classrooms for about 20 minutes per observation collecting evidence related to the problem of practice.  

Sample “Problems of Practice”:

• Are students being asked to do something more than remembering or literal recall?
• Are students doing more than “sit and get?” What kinds of student engagement, participation, and equity are observed?

At our school, we have created collaborative time for teachers.  We have created intervention strategies for our students.  We have worked to engage our staff, students and community in the development of our dynamic School Improvement Plan.  We have embedded staff development within a staff meeting model that has provided authentic ownership of our meeting time by our teachers.  And yet I am so excited to contact the South Lane School District and continue to work closely with Jamie and the Kelowna School District here in BC on this concept of Instructional Rounds. 

A concept such as this that allows us to qualitatively describe and replicate elements of good teaching in all of our classrooms through the optic of the skills that we want students to achieve is intriguing to me:  this looks to be an inclusive and high-yield process that engages learning at every level.

It is my hope that as we work our way along the Instructional Rounds pathway, when asked the question "What makes Mrs. Smith such a great Math teacher?" by a colleague, I will be able to more adequately describe the correlates of good teaching so that they can be spread beyond the walls of a single classroom.

You Do Not Have My Full Attention

This morning, I read yet another piece about the commonly held believe that 'young people are more distracted by technology'.

"...There is a widespread belief among teachers that students’ constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, according to two surveys of teachers being released on Thursday.

The researchers note that their findings represent the subjective views of teachers and should not be seen as definitive proof that widespread use of computers, phones and video games affects students’ capability to focus.

Even so, the researchers who performed the studies, as well as scholars who study technology’s impact on behavior and the brain, say the studies are significant because of the vantage points of teachers, who spend hours a day observing students...."

This article was nested in another article asking for students to comment on whether they were distracted by technology.

This dialogue reminds me of a scene from The Social Network, where Mark Zuckerberg is asked by a lawyer whether or not the lawyer "has the attention" of the Facebook mogul:



I don't find this question of whether people are more distracted by technology to be very difficult.  THEY ARE MORE DISTRACTED.  But more specifically, we are all more likely to be distracted by things that are changing, dynamic, or more interesting and engaging than what we are currently doing.

At the most basic level, as a former PE teacher, when I was addressing my class in the gym to show them a new skill, I made sure that I stood against a solid wall and the class faced me while I was speaking.  This was instead of them sitting against the wall and looking  right past me at the other PE classes that were in the weight room or on the mezzanine.  It is natural to be distracted!

We need to stop judging 'young people' and their being distracted, having short attention spans, or whatever other denigrating phraseology we can come up with about them being less engaged in classrooms across North America.

Why?  I am an educator, and I love to learn.  Like most of us, I read hundreds of articles and blogs every month, go to dozens of PD sessions, and gaggles of meetings and presentations--an education geek to say the least.  However, you do not have my (nor many of my colleagues, I would guess) full attention at a meeting or presentation if:

• you are minimally prepared (and we can tell)
• you are reading from a Powerpoint
• you are giving me information that I could have read in an email or a memo
• you are lecturing for more than 3-5 minutes at a time
• you are not maximizing the number of interactions that I can have in the room, either with you, my peers, the material that we are working with

If you aren't doing some, many or all of these things (depending on the context) I have a great smartphone, and I am going to be checking my email, looking at my Google Reader, having a peek at a chat on Twitter, looking at my calendar to see what else I have on the go, checking the weather....on and on and on.  And I am an education geek who wants to learn from you.

So my question is, why would we EXPECT the full attention of our students?  To that end, as a Principal, if I have the most boring and least engaging staff meeting prepared for my teachers (and we are working hard NOT to do this), why would I expect the full attention of my staff?  And it doesn't matter about technology.  Before, it was doodling, passing notes, daydreaming.  Now we (and by 'we', I include adults and students) just have a different distractor.

But regardless of my great smartphone, if you

• are over-prepared (and we can tell)
• have a Powerpoint with pictures and videos and interesting dialogue
• are giving me information that I need to have
• are lecturing for more than 3-5 minutes at a time but have different bits of multimedia (sights, sounds, pictures, things to touch and manipulate) that stimulate a number of my senses
• you are maximizing the number of interactions that I can have in the room, either with you, my peers, or the material that we are working with through things such as literacy strategies like Bank On It, Socratic Circles, GOSSIP, and others 

I am engaged.  My phone is in my pocket.  And if you are into it, and using interactive technologies that allow me to contribute (like a Google Doc), vote or give feedback (like Polleverywhere, or Socrative), or find songs or take pictures to tell a story....well, I am SO in, and my phone is now a tool for learning.  And kids will be in as well.  They won't seem 'more distracted', and it will be because of what WE do or don't do, not because of their access to technology.

Collectively, we have an obligation to engage those that we are teaching or working with.  To simply blame technology for students being 'more distracted' is both limp and counterproductive.  And by adopting this mindset, we will never succeed in getting the 'full attention' of anyone.

Innovation and a Hard Head

Last night, I was flipping through the channels and happened across the movie Moneyball.  I had seen the movie before, and in fact had written a blog about it several months ago called Moneyball and Education. However, I tend to watch movies more than once, and even though it was about half way through, I decided to tune in for the last 45 minutes.

Near the conclusion of the movie, Oakland General Manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) is being interviewed by Tom Werner, one of the owners of the Boston RedSox. Werner is trying to woo Beane to Boston:  he believed that the revolutionary (and highly controversial and opposed) way that Billy Beane was using statistical research rather the more traditional 'eye of the talent scout' and 'gut feeling' approach taken in the past. While the clip starts out with a bit of a tour of Fenway Park (which is of special interest to me), the part that really struck me begins right around the two minute mark:



Specifically, the piece where Tom Werner refers to the struggles that Beane was having with the traditionalists in Baseball and says:

"I know you're taking it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall....he ALWAYS gets bloody.  It's a threat.  Not only to the way of doing business, but a threat to the game.  Which ultimately is a threat to their livelihood.  Their jobs.  They way that they do things."

Over the past six years that I have been at my school, we have made numerous changes.  We have changed our timetable.  We have introduced collaborative time for our teachers.  We have created invitational tutorial time.  We have made directive intervention time. We have confronted and changed grading practices, and provide students with multiple opportunities to meet learning outcomes.  We have changed the way we approach school improvement plans.  We have created free wi-fi.  We have unblocked social media sites.  We encourage BYOD.  We are changing faculty and leadership team meetings.  We are changing our library to a learning hub.  And there are still more things that we will look at in the future.

Some would believe that these changes are for the better.  Some would think that the changes have had little impact on our school.  And some would think that these changes have made our school sub-standard in comparison to what it was in the past.  But regardless of the perceptions of the impact of these changes, one thing is for sure: change is not easy, especially if there are not instant results to help ameliorate some of the challenges come with change. Examining and confronting 'the way we do things around here' can cause a great deal of angst and dyspepsia, even for highly supportive people in our organization. And I have seen it first hand.

As much as I am proud of the changes that we have made, I look back at the way that I went about engineering some of those changes early on in my time at our school with regret.  I could have done things differently, and more specifically, I could have done things better.  I could have went slower.  I could have done a more thorough job of creating meaning and a sense of urgency.  I could have involved more people.  I could have listened more and spoken less.  Hindsight has provided me endless opportunities to fret about and reflect upon what I could have done better.  To borrow from Tom Werner, I might not have went 'first', but I went through the wall early with some of the things we did.  I took it in the teeth whenever there was a negative that could be attributed to the changes that were made.  I definitely got bloody. 

But that's change, isn't it?  I have read more books and articles on change than I care to remember.  Different ideas from theoreticians and practitioners, from colleagues and from my PLN.  Building trust.  Developing relationships.  Engaging stakeholders.  Creating urgency.  Pressure and support.  There are so many phrases that go along with change.

But at the end of the day, I find change to be challenging.  Messy.  Controversial.  But then it happens, and we adapt. And as much as I wish that I could have done a number of things differently, over the last 6 years we have changed.  And I believe in the changes that we have made, because our students are more successful than they ever have been.  Our high achieving students still achieve at a high level, and our promising learners are more engaged and successful than they ever have been.  And I believe that as a staff, we have grown together through the changes.  I know that I have learned much from our teachers--I always learn from our teachers.

In the end, I guess what I appreciate about Billy Beane and the concepts of sabermetrics that he took from Bill James and adopted for his team is that he knew it would be challenging.  Messy.  Controversial.  He got bloody.  But in the end, he stuck with it, his team adapted, and now, so has all of baseball.  Because it was the right thing to do.

Change is difficult, but if we stay focused on the idea that the innovation that we are advancing is sound in its rationale and research and ultimately the right thing to do, I think it makes our collective foreheads a little bit harder for when we hit that wall similar to the one that Beane did in Moneyball.

Don't Get In To Classrooms Enough? Create 'Windows'!

"I wish I could get into classrooms more than I do right now".

While likely not a hundred percent of administrators, I am sure that most Principals and Vice-Principals have had this phrase pass through their lips at one point or another during the course of their career.  With the demands of student dealings, teacher questions, parent conferences, meetings with district personnel, break and lunch supervision, and the seemingly endless avalanche of paperwork that falls on to their desks, administrators can easily be crushed under the weight of day-to-day operations in their schools.  I am not complaining--it's just a reality sometimes.  Like many teachers and administrators in education, I often find myself creating a 'to-do list' before the day starts, and by the time the day ends, I not only have accomplished exactly none of my must-do tasks for the day, I actually have a few new ones tacked on.  And suddenly getting into classrooms, one of my favourite and most important pieces of my job as an administrator, falls off of the side of my desk.

But there are some different ways that I try to 'get into the classroom' that don't involve my physically being there.  I can do some things later in the evening, once my kids have gone to bed.  One of these ways I try to create a 'window' into the classrooms of our 80 teachers is through reading and providing feedback on the syllabus for their courses, or course outlines.  "Course outlines?", you say, "Aren't they those boring one sheeters that tend to be the first thing to rip out of a student's binder?  No one pays attention to those.".  I grant you that in the past, I might have agreed with that.  However, that was my fault.  I rarely looked at them unless there was some sort of issue in the classroom, and I certainly never discussed them with the teacher.  But four years ago, I decided that if I was going to request them, and teachers were going to go through the effort of doing them, they deserved my feedback.

I believe that course outlines need to serve a number of purposes for students and parents:

• They need to inform the student and the parent, in student-friendly language
• the specific skills and outcomes that they will have learned by the end of the course
• the methods by which the outcomes will be evaluated
• the supports and interventions that will be in place should they struggle with learning those outcomes
• the means by which students can accelerate should they master the outcomes
• They need to detail a communication protocol with the student and the parent that demonstrates frequent, two-way dialogue
• with the teacher's email provided, and the parent's email sought so that asynchronous communication can take place, rather than the dreaded 'telephone tag'
• with an indication of regular progress updates to regularly inform students and parents about how a student is meeting the learning outcomes of the course
• with suggestions about how parents can be positively involved in supporting their student.
• They need to get the student and the parent excited about the course!  I like to think that we never see our courses as 'mandatory'.  We should approach our courses as electives, where we are 'marketing' our course to students in a way that gets them pumped up and engaged before they even start the class!

But course outlines also serve several purposes for me in terms of starting a conversation with the teacher in a number of areas:

• Learning Outcomes:  By looking at the outline and outlines of other members of a department, I can start the conversation with the teacher about whether they have used collaboratively agreed upon outcomes for their course that will prepare students for success at subsequent levels of that subject area.  We can talk about designing down and scaffolding.  We can discuss the concept of assignments versus outcomes.  We can look at how the outcomes that they have listed match up with not only the department, but with the curriculum guidelines laid out by the provincial government.  We can look at the number of outcomes that the teacher is trying to cover.  We can discuss resources that will help them engage their students.  We can dialogue about 'struggle points'--those outcomes that students tend to struggle with and ways to ameliorate those problem areas to ensure student success.
• Assessment Practices:  The course outline indicates how students will be assessed.  When reading the outline, I can start a conversation about assessing by outcome/skill rather than assessment tool.  It is always a lively discussion when we chat about 'tests worth 60%' rather than 'oral expression skills worth 40%, written language expression worth 40%, etc' in a language course.  Or to talk about the '40% Term 1, 40% for Term 2, 20% Final Exam' model versus a model that recognizes that students learn at different rates.  Or about toxic grading practices such as late marks.  We can also talk about how the staff member uses the assessments that they give to students to inform their practice.  These are just a few of the endless rich conversations that can take place around assessment.
• Interventions and Accommodations:  By looking at the course outlines, I can get a sense of how our teachers ensure student success.  Whether it is through methods that they have created to give students multiple opportunities to demonstrate outcomes, or if it is utilizing one the many mechanisms in our timetable, I can work with the teacher to help them support the students who learn at different rates in their classrooms.

And these are just some of the conversations we can have!

Much like our staff does with our students, I like to give guidelines for our teachers to work with each June when they are preparing their course outlines for the following year.  I use this Course Outline Checklist as a set of statements for teachers to reflect upon their outlines and modify them for the next school year.  At the beginning of our semesters in September and February, I collect the outlines, and try to give feedback on them in the first few weeks of the year.  I use the same form to give feedback (here is a sample), as well as making comments and using colors to indicate strengths and areas for improvement. 

With 80 teachers, many of whom teach different courses in multiple departments, this process can take a long time. Furthermore, many of our staff members have created their own blogs, which takes the course outline to another level, and I love giving feedback on those as well, but not all of our teachers are there yet.  But the conversations that I can have with our staff as a result of their course outlines can be incredibly rich and worthwhile.  Not a visit to the classroom, I grant you, but certainly meaningful nonetheless.

In the final analysis, if you (like me) feel like you are not in classrooms as much as you like, take the opportunity to create your own 'windows' into classrooms.  You will be pleasantly surprised at what you see!