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If we don't do anything with these principles, I shouldn't have my job.

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We need work plan goals that focus on this work, and each staff gathering needs to spend time grappling with how we can do a better job in these areas. The COVID experience has really been devastating to kids. Yesterday I quarantined a classroom, a soccer team, and 5 football players who missed their first game. In my last parent phone, the mother just wept because her child struggles so much in remote learning and over the past two week had emerged from a period of depression because we had started up football. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that every time I make one of those calls I am harming a kid and a family. My best hope is that every day I make the world a little bit better place. In my current job, there are too many days where I bear the responsibility to tell dozens of families they can't come to school for two weeks due to the pandemic. I don't really feel like I'm making my contribution on those days.

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As a building principal, there is never a shortage of work. So many days I do not complete what I intended to complete. At times, I feel like I move from one crises to the next, while the work I wanted to complete around teaching and learning gets sidelined. In order to do a better job, a lot of my time would be spent organizing professional development, monitoring it's implementation, having courageous conversations to propel our implementation. I really do enjoy this work and it's why I became a principal. However, as crises emerge it is also clear that no one else is available to handle it, so I take them on and the change agent part of my job suffers.

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If I take these seriously I will model it in how I design professional development plans for staff and develop our work plan goals. If the end goal is to have teachers use practices that promote student agency - meaningful goal management and metacognition, practices that build efficacy, growth mindset, meaningful projects, and lesson design that increases a sense of belongingness - then I need to model those practices for staff. Our pd plan should allow for choice, rigor, engage teachers in work that matters, and above all else, they should talk and grapple with ideas far more then I talk! Sometimes I feel like I meet this mark, but I can certainly become more consistent. Another practice I'd like to adopt is to incorporate more time for metacognition into our staff meetings. Meaningful reflection is a great teaching tool and I think I can do a better job providing structures for teachers to do this about their work in promoting student centered classrooms.

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If we don't do anything, we might not solve the grapple of student disengagement and nonachievemnt for some groups

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If we don't do anything, we maintain status quo. We continue to build an educational system that has been built on a system that does not serve all students for generations now. As we enter the "re-invention" stage from the pandemic, we must be willing to set some practices that we always used down and try new ones that are more equitable and allow for student ownership.

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I think that there needs to be discussion and calibration on how we view students. Do we trust student voices? When our students show us their true selves, do we believe them? Or do we continue to build what we believe is what they need? And how do we find that balance between what they need foundationally and where they personally want to go?

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If I /we do nothing, then thinking and learning are at risk. I believe the best gift we can give to others is to create the right context for them to rock at their hustle. By limiting interactions where good questions are at heart of the interaction, we rob ourselves and others of our greatest potential. I also recognize the uniqueness of being a team of visible thinkers. If we stop modeling that way of being, then it will trickle out to our entire organization. For schools to be a culture of thinking for students, they must be cultures of thinking for adults.

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If our team takes these seriously, the conversations that were started yesterday in book study (re: grapple and productive struggle) shift how we give students access to the learning. Rather than us spending time designing different tasks for students, we keep them in mind and ask, "Where would "Joe" want to enter this? What would be his first thought? " Instead of

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"However, research by David Shernoff found that 75% of the variation in student engagement was attributable to differences in the classroom learning context while only 25% could be explained by students’ own background characteristics" Student engagement (or lack of) is the most common problem of practice I hear in both Durango middle schools. If we take  these this serious, how might we create clarity for the instructional pathways needed to engage all students in meaningful learning? Practices at the school level that invite student agency like COL, student let conferences, compelling learning in Expeditions, Elements Aligned-Instruction (when it happens in a class), embedded SEL and community building into content learning, these are current practices I see at EMS. Covid has disrupted some aspects of these this year. If 75% of student engagement is attributed to what happens in the classroom, I wonder about robust focus on solving the grapple of student engagement with     these practices that have  kids to own their learning, and ultimately act on it. I think we need to create clarity on why a focus on teir 1 instruction and meaningful, engaging learning experience for kids is the pathway, and we create plcs that empower teachers to act on solving this grapple together.

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Q1:
If I take these seriously, the implications for my day-to-day interactions would be more student voice in the design of the curriculum experiences. I am leaning into the principle that learning happens at point of challenge and strategic questions lead the way, which means that there is more student voice in the design of learning experiences. Our adult perceptions of how learning should go would shift because we start by asking the end-user of what they want and need.

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I am thinking about the team as this group and the many ways we impact the schools we are part of.  I wonder about what questions might drive our group to action in spreading the message/practices of this class around creating cultures of thinking

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The wrongs to be made right would be the ways I've treated people this year. The transmission of information rather than the collective sharing of wisdom is not my chosen leadership stance. I feel like I have violated my personal beliefs and my relationships have suffered. Being the one with all of the answers causes you to dig a hole you can't see out of and it isolates you from the great thinking of others. I will be inviting those whom I'm lucky to work alongside regularly into the inquiry. Less me, more others.

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Building on my first answer, I want to reopen the dialogue. I miss labs and professional inquiry where we were safe to ask vulnerable questions about our practice. Questions create authenticity and purpose for learning and thinking. Our teams must get back to collaborative discourse and thinking together...asking great questions will spur that on.

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This week i had several plcs with different teams around the topic of differentiation. I have been now reflecting on my role as a coach and what I might need to be refining related to how I differntiate for the individuals and teams I get to work with. Both middle schools,  have similar instructional goals forcused on apply strategies to engage marginaized and sometimes disengaged student populations.Thinking about the need to have teacher's transfer these practices to meet the needs of kids everyday, I wonder how oftern I am creating a space for teachers to be in that productive struggle sweet spot in our learning. How can invite more teacher ownership of this process? If learning happens for people at the point of challenge, am I creating that opportunty for all teachers during my interactions in plc?

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If I take the idea that questions drive thinking and learning to hear, then I'll get back to a place where I ask great questions (and foster others' questioning) and then get out of the way. This year has been one of minutiae and management which caused me to lose my focus on learning together and creating space for thinking together. I'm paying dearly for that now by just doing stuff and miss the collective reasoning experiences I've had in the past.

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If we don’t do anything, what will happen?

We don’t want to accidentally track so that students who are English Language Learners and on Special Program supports don’t get provided the same opportunities as other students. With mixed ability groupings, they will get exposed to the high level questions posed by their peers for instance, which currently they are missing out on. That peer modeling helps the students who struggle with generating questions build their own ability to wonder.  It also offers exposure and experience showing that it is ok to not know and to ask. It is ok to make mistakes. It doesn’t make you “dumb” to question, but instead makes you  “smart.”  Making mistakes is one way we learn.

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Are there any wrongs that need to be righted?

Mixed ability groupings in our classes provide student to student modeling of not just academic skill sets but also executive functioning skills and most importantly to help create a culture of thinking and model academic dispositions.

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Learning happens at the point of challenge. We have to get the students to show up, be engaged, have the endurance , grit and interest to not throw in the towel at the moment of challenge. With professional learning for co-workers, we are going to be self-reflective practitioners and will not give up with a challenge, with our students, it’s a different story. It is important to us in regards to students because all of the instructional design, planning won’t get us to that place of learning if the student won’t engage. This idea of differentiation is huge because we need the students to be here, to show up, to try. To have the relationship and the trust with teachers to engage in challenges without checking out.

What might I do differently? Promote student ownership of their learning, more. Find ways to teach self-differentiation, offer opportunities for students to use their strengths with awareness of their areas of growth.

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What new actions could our team take? Incorporate and provide more opportunities for reflections on student learning and thinking. Practically speaking, I will work on some crew lessons for this. Leading up to student led conferences and celebration of learning as two options for synthesis of student thought.

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Why It Matters

The pressure of mastery for academic skills sometimes pushes teachers to focus on transferring information at a quick pace, rather than taking the time to fully immerse students in the journey of learning, allowing them to grapple with ideas, sort through ambiguities, and deal with complexities ( 16). What gets lost is the opportunity for deep learning and rich understanding of the material-the very things needed for long-term retention and robust transfer ( 15).

In a study comparing American and Japanese teachers, researchers found that American teachers tended to demonstrate solutions to mathematical problems, whereas Japanese teachers allowed students to grapple with the problems and allowed time for solutions to be developed( 9, 24). When teachers-whether in America, Australia, or any other country-demonstrate solutions or "proceduralize" learning, they take away the challenge of problems, consequently converting problem-solving tasks into mere exercises in which students apply procedures/rules to a problem without the cognitive challenge that leads to deep learning ( 2, 4, 16). In fact, evidence shows that teachers' tendency to reduce the challenge of tasks in order to make tasks more manageable for students is common practice ( 2, 3, 23). This simplification often removes the very struggle that promotes students' learning and engagement ( 17). It is the struggle that fosters deep learning and understanding ( 13, 25).

Teachers unlikely to challenge their students if they do not view them as capable of complexity. Instead, the opposite happens: teachers engage in over-scaffolding, dumbing-down, and simplify the learning. To be sure, much of this rescuing behavior is done with good intentions. Teachers and parents think that, by making the material "easy" to grasp, they are giving students the opportunity to be successful. These teachers often focus on work completion rather than learning, on product rather than process, and on the short-term rather than the long haul. In studies of how teachers respond to students' struggles, teachers who evaluated students' responses as simply right or wrong tended to adapt tasks in ways that reduced the complexity of the tasks and simply made it possible for students to "get" right answers. In contrast, teachers who focused on understanding students' thinking were able to build on that thinking and make adaptations that enhanced both task complexity and students' opportunity to engage with the concepts ( 3). In studies of parents who regularly intervened to "help" children by taking over and completing the task for them, researchers found it had a negative effect on children's persistence and engagement with the tasks ( 12).

Another driver of both teachers' reduction of challenge and students' fear of it is that too many of us simply do not see the benefits of learning from our mistakes. We may have internalized society's message that mistakes are failures that reflect badly on us and thus must be avoided at all costs. However, research suggests that academic struggle is necessary for growth. Making mistakes, but more importantly learning from them, helps with brain growth and connectivity ( 1). Some of the highest achieving people in the world are those who have struggled the most. Simply put: if we are not struggling, we are not learning.

Given many teachers' efforts to reduce complexity, it may come as a surprise to learn that students report that they actually like and value a degree of cognitive complexity as well as the feeling of being pushed and challenged-as long as it is accompanied with support ( 8, 5, 11, 17). More demanding tasks encourage students to seek out connections in their learning, which keeps them more intrinsically interested, engaged, and motivated ( 8). The flipside is that when students don't feel like they are being cognitively challenged, they are more likely to disengage. National studies confirm that lack of challenge is a reason for disengagement in the classroom ( 8, 21, 22, 26).

Additionally, challenge helps students develop a growth mindset ( 6). As students learn to overcome challenges, they come to seechallenges and setbacks as a natural step in the process of learning ( 7). One study of students in Chile found that students with a growth mindset were 3 times more likely to score at the top 20% of the test, while students with a fixed mindset were 4 times more likely to score at the bottom 20% ( 19). Not only is a growth mindset associated with better performance and learning outcomes, but it also affects students' perceptions of schools. When students have a fixed mindset, schools are seen as threatening places where students have to prove their intelligence. In contrast, when students have a growth mindset, schools are viewed as exciting places filled with challenge and growth ( 19).

What constitutes a challenging task versus a task that is just hard? There are many ways in which tasks might be made both challenging and engaging. Dan Meyer argues that it is perplexity, not real-life application, that engages students in mathematics ( 17). He says that perplexity is simply the stuff of being perplexed. It is something that piques interest, which makes us want to know more, that has a bit of both mystery and complexity to it. Creating cognitive conflict is another way to create the conditions in which students want to learn how to think ( 18, 20). In science, challengingtasks require students to 1) use knowledge to explain observable phenomenon; 2) reason with observations and data to construct or evaluate explanatory models or theory; and 3) use evidence to develop arguments ( 10). Yet another way to challenge students is by placing them in the Zone of Proximal Development, the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can achieve with guidance ( 14).

What It Looks and Sounds Like

Of course, there is no single way this principle will look and sound. There is ample room for individuals to add their own creativity and stamp on things. The list below is a sampling of ideas that might be useful to advance your practice.

Emphasize the process of learning over the final product. When students understand how they can control, direct, and change their own learning process (through their use of strategies, study habits, etc.), the more they will understand that they have the ability to tackle challenges.

Teach students that their intelligence can be developed and that they can "grow their brains." This growth occurs when we stretch, push, and press ourselves in new learning situations, causing the brain to create new connections between brain cells through a process that changes the balance of available neurotransmitters and changing how connections are made ( 27).

See all your students as powerful, capable learners and thinkers. Students can tell when a teacher doesn't believe in them, so this must be genuine.

Use the Learning Pit Model developed by James Nottingham ( 18) to help students visualize the learning process and understand why challenge is a necessary part of learning. See Exhibit 1.

Plan instruction using the Learning Pit's 4 Stages of Challenge ( 18). See Exhibit 2.

Provide feedback that acknowledges effort and actions more than ability. For instance, you might begin a feedback session by saying: "Let's talk about what you tried, and what you can try next." This helps students understand that making mistakes is okay but that they can overcome them ( 7).

Use routines like " I used to think...Now I think " to communicate that our learning, our thinking, our understanding is always changing, growing, and developing.

Understand that not all failure is productive nor does it stem from the same source. Mistakes fall into three broad categories: preventable, complexity-related, and intelligent. See the Spectrum of Failure ( 28) in Exhibit 3.

Talk about your own embrace of challenge, showing your student how you are stretching yourself, trying new things, growing and learning.

Celebrate mistakes as opportunities for learning. Use a routine such as "My Favorite No" to make this a normal part of your classroom (see resources below).

Create tasks with "Low Threshold, High Ceiling, and Wide Walls" that allow students to naturally self-differentiate and find their own point of challenge (see resource section below for video example).

Scaffold learning when needed but don't over scaffold. Don't rob students of the opportunity to problem solve and experiment.

Encourage productive struggle and support risk-taking (see Exhibit 4)

Make sure every unit of instruction is filled with worthwhile learning opportunities that ask students to engage in novel application, meaningful inquiry, and effective communication and that are valued by students (see Exhibit 5).

Make prototyping, drafting, trial runs, and experimentation a regular part of learning so that meaningful, productive mistakes happen.

Use structures such as the Ladder of Feedback or SAIL to encourage revision and growing ideas.

Allow opportunities for students to continue to learn even after a summative test. This might mean using master quizzes that focus only on items students initially missed, reflective test analysis, peer-to-peer teaching (see "Allowing Test Retakes" in resources for more ideas).

Reflecting on Your Teaching

Reflect on what gets valued, shared, and celebrated in your classroom:

Does my response to student mistakes indicate that I see mistakes as a sign of failure or an opportunity for learning?

What is celebrated in my classroom: grades, progress, personal growth, something else? How so?

What image do I hold in my head of each of my students as a learner? How does this image get translated into actions? Do my actions communicate that I have confidence that they are the sort of person who can come up with relevant questions, opinions, reasons, examples, and comparisons?

When my students fail, do I seek to understand why or do I simply assume it can always be attributed to either a lack of effort or ability?

Where was the challenge, the stretch, the press in my lesson today? Were all students' challenged or just some?

How am I finding the point of challenge for all of my students?

In what ways do I have a growth mindset and where do I have a fixed mindset? Note: Dweck has indicated we are all a mix of both and no one is completely 100% one or the other.

Where and when do I give students time for structured, meaningful reflection on their learning? Is this meaningfully influencing how students approach their learning in the next round? If so, how? If not, why not?

What was the last big challenge I faced? How did I tackle it? When and how might I share this story with my students?

Do I inadvertently put a ceiling or cap on tasks and assignments so that students stop work and learning once they have reached that ceiling? How might I raise or lift the ceiling so that all students can find their point of challenge?

When students complete a task or assignment easily and quickly, do I simply give them something else to do or do I redesign the task so that it is appropriately challenging for them?

Do I tend to rescue students when they struggle or do I encourage their initiative by asking questions that will encourage them to do the thinking?

Using Quick Data to Inform Your Efforts

At the end of a week of instruction, ask student to complete an Exit Ticket reflection for you on Where's the Stretch? The Exit Ticket consists of the following two questions:

Where were you stretched this week in your learning by the lessons, activities, and learning that we/you did? Tell me about why you selected that particular moment/event.

Where did you stretch or push yourself personally? Tell me about what you did, why, and how you felt about that.

While only two questions, it will be important to give students enough time to reflect on the entire week of learning and come up with the two events and to write about a paragraph for each. If this is the first time using these prompts, you will need to talk about the idea of a stretch in one's learning: what it looks like, what it feels like, and why it is important to our learning. This might include a discussion of why challenge matters and how it feeds learning. We use the word stretch to try and capture the sweet spot of learning, when things are not too easy but also not so difficult that they become out of reach.

If you are new to using Exit Tickets, a key part of their success is that teachers have to show their students that the time students spend on them matters-that we as teachers read them and use them in our planning. This often means sharing our insights and learning, and what are planning to do with it, with our students after we have read them.

Some things to think about as you read through students' responses:

What interesting or surprising details do you notice?

How are students' responses similar to what you expected and what is different?

Do students' response reflect that they understand the concept of a "stretch" versus something merely being difficult or hard? What lets you know that? If they don't, where, when, and how will you revisit that discussion?

Do students understand the idea of stretching or pushing themselves and how they might do that? What lets you know that? If they don't, where, when, and how will you revisit that discussion?

Do students' reactions to their stretches indicate that these moments produced joy, a sense of accomplishment, and a greater sense of self-efficacy as learners?

What do you notice about the types of learning opportunities that produced a stretch? Are there some common factors or elements you are noticing?

What did you notice about student learning (either as individuals or as a group) in the stretch moments they identified as you were teaching? Were you aware students were being stretched? Had you planned on that to happen or not? Did you press into it? Were there ways you might have pressed into it even more?

Are there students who cannot identify a stretch? Why do you think this is? How might you model, support, and help them to do so in the future?

How will you share what you have learned with your students the next time you see them? How will you use this data in your planning?

Connection to the 8 Cultural Forces

Interactions In our interactions with students, we can show that we believe in them as capable learners able to solve problems and build understanding. This doesn't mean we are not helpful, but we avoid rescuing students or doing the thinking for them. In addition, we press students in their thinking to push and advance their understanding by listening to them, questioning them, and allowing them to respond with elaborated thinking. We don't get frustrated when students make valid learning mistakes, but celebrate them as an opportunity to learn. Our feedback acknowledges effort and actions over ability.

Opportunities. We create learning opportunities that challenge students and engage them in productive struggle. These may be opportunities to explore big complex issues or those that contain a curious case of perplexity that will engage them. We seek to find the point of challenge for all students by creating low-threshold, high-ceiling tasks that self-differentiate. We create opportunities for trial runs, drafts, and prototyping, where the point is to learn from initial efforts. We create opportunities for reflection on the struggles of learning and the opportunity to learn from mistakes.

. As more experienced learners, we model how we deal with mistakes, frustrations, and failures when we encounter them ourselves. We might look at historical and current models of learning through trial and error and mistakes, highlighting the process of learning as one of continual growth. The Learning Pit ( 18), provides a visual model of the learning process so that students come to expect a period of confusion.

. We use the language of trials, drafts, prototype, first runs, and so on to give students a vocabulary to talk about an important phase of learning. We also have and can use a language of feedback (clarifying, valuing, questioning, suggesting). We use a language of learning more focused on effort, progress, and the future than on grades, performance, and ability: "Let's talk about what you tried, and what you can try next." " Where was the stretch for you in this? "

. We use routines that focus on reflection, such as ESP+I , I used to think..., and My Favorite No, which embed the view that learning is continually evolving and includes struggle. We use routines and protocols to support peer feedback and prototyping, such as SAIL and the Ladder of Feedback. We use routines to help students explore complex issues and ideas, such as Tug-of-War or 4 Corner Debate.

Expectations. When we hold the belief and expectation that learning is complex, multi-faceted, iterative in nature, and contains challenges, our students will gradually come to see it in a similar way (see Principle #2, reference 17). We also must believe that people can grow in their intelligence, having an understanding of and expectation for a growth mindset.

Time. Creating and realizing opportunities for challenge does take more time than simply delivering content and expecting students to memorize it. But this time is an investment in students' deeper learning that produces both more engagement and better academic performance in the long-run.

Environment. When the walls of our classroom celebrate the messy, inchoate, evolving, and complex nature of learning through the display of prototypes, reflections, analysis, and ongoing learning rather than simply products, we reinforce the message that this is how we view learning and that the process is as important to celebrate as the product, perhaps even more so.

Principle # 7 Learning occurs at the Point of Challenge

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#7 Point of Challenge - Cultures of Thinking in Action

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The pressure of mastery for academic skills sometimes pushes teachers to focus on transferring information at a quick pace, rather than taking the time to fully immerse students in the journey of learning, allowing them to grapple with ideas, sort through ambiguities, and deal with complexities ( 16).

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Why it Matters

Questions are drivers of inquiry, catalysts for changing our perceptions, vehicles for developing understanding, promoters of action, and opportunities to clarify our thinking . . . and, a major way that teachers interact with their students ( 1). There is evidence that shows that teacher questions consume between 10-20% of the time students spend in classrooms ( 2). However, research shows that more than 80% of all teacher questions only require students to recall facts ( 3). Such questions may help to test students' memory and build knowledge, but they do little to deepen understanding or engagement. In contrast, constructive questions focus on developing understanding while facilitative questions- such as, What makes you say that?-aim to make students' thinking visible (see Exhibit 1). Generative, authentic questions -those questions to which teachers do not already know the answer- are the least asked type of question despite evidence that they are positively associated with student engagement, critical thinking, and academic achievement ( 4).As classrooms become cultures of thinking, teachers tend to reduce the number of review and procedural questions asked while increasing the amount of facilitative questions ( 5).

If questions are important vehicles for learning, they shouldn't totally be the purview of teachers. Questions are one of the most powerful ways students express their thinking, enhance problem-solving, monitor understanding, and improve as active and autonomous learners ( 6). Across most disciplines, providing structures and opportunities for student questions is cited as essential for student comprehension, self-assessment of content and intellectual engagement ( 7). In addition, student self-generation of questions related to the material they are studying has shown to be more beneficial to recall than restudying of the material ( 12). Research suggests that once adequate conditions are established, students' questions improve both in frequency and in quality ( 6). Therefore, we need to provide students with both the structures and opportunities to ask and explore their questions. Unfortunately, student-asked questions, those focused on ideas and not the logistics of assignments, are too often few and far between ( 2).

Questions are also a major way in which we express and recognize curiosity.Fostering student curiosity and questioning involves creating opportunities for authentic problem solving and robust inquiry and creating a classroom culture where questioning is valued. Unfortunately, many of these conditions are all too rare in schools today. Many teachers tend to value answers, at the expense of encouraging students to ask good questions.

However, it is not enough to merely encourage students to ask questions more frequently. Research shows that the quality of questions is crucial ( 6).Therefore, it is important for teachers to model critical thinking and curiosity in their questions, specifically employing deep- level, constructive questions. Such questions ask students to explain and predict, apply learning across contexts, evaluate information, and wonder about the world around them. When student questioning is enhanced and coupled with high quality teacher questioning, both teachers and students become highly inquisitive learners who value questions as opportunities for exploration, active learning, and self-growth.

What It Looks and Sounds Like

Of course, there is no one way that focusing o questions as drivers of learning and thinking will look and sound. There is ample room for individuals to add their own creativity and stamp on things. The list below is a sampling of ideas that might be useful to advance your practice.

Plan units around generative questions, which can be the "legs" that drive learning. These could be essential questions, questions of inquiry, or debatable questions. To learn more what makes a question "essential" and how to craft questions with these characteristics see Exhibit 2 ( 8).

Model curiosity for your students and look for opportunities to ask authentic questions, that is, questions to which you don't already know the answer. Such questions model your own engagement with the content and send a signal that you are a learner too. When a teacher is curious and interested, it often sparks deeper engagement by students( 3, 7).

Use constructive questions to support students in building understanding. On the other hand, try to limit review questions. While these questions have a place in classrooms and can be useful in consolidating knowledge and information, they should not dominate the learning space. Likewise limit procedural questions by using simple directives. Instead of asking, "Does everyone have their pencil?" Direct, "Everyone, please get out your pencils." (see Exhibit 1 for a Typology of Questions)

Provide plenty of think time after asking constructive questions. This sends a signal that one is not expected to know the answer but to engage with the question. Use strategies like Think-Pair-Share or table talks to allow everyone to share their thinking.

Ask facilitative questions and use the reflective toss to focus on catching the meaning behind students' responses and pushing them to elaborate on their thinking. Asking a follow-up question such as, 'What makes you say that?' can encourage students to explain their thinking. Facilitative questions show that you are interested in students' thinking more just correct answers.

Encourage and support students asking questions of one another in class discussions rather than you dominating the discussion by being the only questioner. Some ways to do this include: Having students evaluate each other'sresponses. Use basketball questioning vs. ping-pong questioning ( 9). Include opportunities for students to ask questions to their teachers, one another, and themselves ( 10).

Teach students the difference between clarifying and probing questions. Encourage students to ask one another probing questions that force the learner to reflect and explain when giving peer feedback or advice. Name your own questions for students to provide a model.

Create a culture of questioning where questioning is valued, visible, and actively promoted. Encourage and invite students to ask questions that exhibit their curiosity and wonder. Honor these questions by incorporating them into the learning as much as possible. Have a place where such questions reside: a wonder wall, an inquiry notebook, or a google doc.

Help students to ask better questions using techniques such as the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) or through the routine Question Sorts.

Provide students with feedback on their questions or have them provide feedback to one another. Critical feedback can help students refine their questions and get better at asking higher-level questions ( 11).

Demonstrate the ongoing and evolving nature of questions in learning through use of question journals, documentation, the 5 Why's, or The Squid (another explantion of The Squid)

Provide plenty of opportunities for students to pursue the questions that they are most interested in and curious about.

Model self-questioning as a metacognitive technique for advancing one's own learning. Generate a list of questions students can ask themselves during each phase of a project or cycle of inquiry to help them evaluate, reflect on, and direct their learning.

Reflecting on Your Teaching

These questions are meant to push your thinking beyond where you are currently. Perhaps they might even make you a bit uncomfortable. As you will recall, living with and going deeply into questions and puzzles of teaching are part of what it means to be in the inquiry space. Pick a question or questions that will help you better understand the effects of your actions, critically reflect on them, provoke additional questions, and/or help you think about future actions and possibilities. If you find yourself merely explaining what you currently are doing, chances are you might be reporting more than reflecting. C onsider selecting another prompt that might take you deeper into examining your practice.

Where am I making use of generative, essential questions to guide my units of instruction? How do I keep these questions alive throughout our unit as beacons or guides for our learning?

What are examples of my most effective essential questions? What do I notice about what makes a good guiding, essential question in my subject area and with my students? What makes these engaging for students?

How am I using student questions in my teaching? What are other possibilities for doing so?

Where and how am I modeling my own curiosity?

Where do student questions live in my classroom? If someone walked into my classroom how would they be able to tell from the displays and documentation that I care about curiosity, inquiry, and questioning?

What is my pattern of questioning? Is it ping-pong style with me hitting every question back or are we playing basketball with lots of people involved? Where and how can I further encourage students to respond to each other's responses? Where and how can I do more to promote students asking questions to one another?

Do I give sufficient thinking time when I ask constructive questions so that students have a chance to develop their thinking? Do all students have an opportunity to share their response in some way?

﻿Reflecting on a particular lesson you have just taught or after an observation of a colleague's classroom:

What question did I/they ask that I thought was particularly provocative or useful?

What questions did I/they ask that sparked discussion and engagement?

What student questions about the content emerged in this lesson? Where were there opportunities for student questions to emerge? Where and how might I/they have made more room for students' questions?

Where and when did I/they ask follow-up facilitative questions? Is there a particular facilitative question that seemed to be effective?

Did I/they ask any authentic questions (ones to which I didn't already know the answer)? Where might I/they have done so?

Using Quick Data to Inform Your Efforts

It is often difficult to assess our questioning real time when we are in the midst of teaching. There are several reasons for this. For one, as teachers we simply ask a lot of questions. Our research found that teachers typically ask between 50-100 questions in a class period. Therefore, it just isn't possible to remember all of them. What we do tend to remember are those powerful or effective questions, because they resonate and register more. Consequently, we over estimate the overall quality of our questioning. The First 10 Questions is a process for collecting quick data on a school's collective question asking to identify the kinds of questions students' are experiencing.

The protocol for collecting The First 10 Questions is simple. A documenter, which could be a school leader, coach, or teacher or some combination there of, goes into a classroom and simply records the first 10 questions they hear. They leave the room and go to the next classroom, recording the first 10 questions heard. This process continues for the rest of the class period. It is generally possible to visit 8 to 12 classrooms in a single class period. Note: This process could be carried out to collect questions across the school, within a particular department, or a single grade level. Questions are then compiled and copied to be shared. Often questions are mixed up so that individual classrooms are not readily identifiable. The point is not to assess teachers but to get a sense of the school community's collective questioning. The questions are then shared with teachers as a snapshot of questioning to determine what can be gleaned about the kinds of questions our students are encountering.

Questions to Consider from the Quick Data:

What types of questions, using the typology of question types, are we asking our students?

Which questions from this data snapshot push and press students to think? What makes you say that?

Is there another way to frame a particular question to more deeply engage students?

What is the minimum required of a student in answering a particular question?

If you were a student encountering these questions what would you feel? What would you feel your teachers cared about?

Connection to the 8 Cultural Forces

Interactions. One of the major ways teachers interact with students is through questioning, dialog, and discussion. The types of questions we ask, signal to students our goals and objectives. Are we trying to review knowledge, construct understanding, or facilitate thinking? What balance between these objectives are we striking? In our interactions, are we trying to judge correctness ("good job," "you've got it," "well done," "that's correct") or are we trying to catch students' meaning and understand their thinking? Our discussions need to show we respect and value students' thinking and that we don't always feel we have to be at the center of the discussion.

Modeling. Just as we need to be the models of thinking we want our students to develop, so to must we be models of curiosity and questioning. When we ask authentic questions, model curiosity, display a desire for deeper inquiry, and engage in self-questioning, our students will learn to do the same.

Opportunities. To nurture students' disposition to be curious, we have to create opportunities for our students to question and inquire. Use students' questions to shape units of instruction. Create opportunities for students to pursue their own questions and lines of inquiry. Teach students how to ask good questions of guest speakers and each other. Create opportunities for students to give each other feedback that makes use of both clarifying questions and probing questions.

Time. Provide time for students to pursue their own questions through unstructured time, genius hour, twenty percent time, passion days, or personal projects. Give thinking time after you have asked constructive questions. Allow you and your students time to dwell in the questions rather than feeling every question must be wrapped up and answered within the class period.

Language. To encourage rich discussion and inquiry we must employ the language of listening. Use conditional language (under "language of knowing") in your questioning: "What might be happening here?" to signal you aren't looking for a correct answer but are exploring possibilities. Question starts and stems can be useful initially in helping students to generate, broader, more open, and deeper questions.

Routines. Don't expect students to know how to give good feedback using clarifying and probing questions. Use and practice routines like the Ladder of Feedback or to facilitate this. Use structures like the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) to help students learn how to ask better questions.

Environment. Document and display questions. Essential questions that guide a unit of study should be prominent for quick reference. Make sure that such questions are not just wallpaper, however. Refer to them often. Likewise, document and display students' questions to send a message that curiosity is a valued part of your classroom.

Expectations. Expect your students to be curious and teach for curiosity. Consider the questions students ask as important indicators of their understanding.

Principle #8: Questions drive thinking and learning

"Thinkers aren't limited by what they know, because they can always increase what they know. Rather they're limited by what puzzles them, because there's no way to become curious about something that doesn't puzzle you.
"

- Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael (1992)

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#8 Questions drive L & T - Cultures of Thinking in Action

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Questions are drivers of inquiry, catalysts for changing our perceptions, vehicles for developing understanding, promoters of action, and opportunities to clarify our thinking . . . and, a major way that teachers interact with their students ( 1). There is evidence that shows that teacher questions consume between 10-20% of the time students spend in classrooms ( 2).

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Why it Matters

As teachers, we all want to create powerful learning for our students. Even so, most of us must accept tests as part of our teaching and students' learning reality. The good news is that there is no trade-off between providing students with rich, powerful learning and making sure students are prepared for tests. In a large-scale study conducted in Chicago public schools, researchers found that the best preparation for tests, even tests of knowledge, is the regular engagement in learning opportunities that focus on developing understanding, are connected to student's life, have meaning for students, stress application, and involve communication of one's thinking and expression of one's ideas in the language of the disciplines ( 10).

What constitutes powerful learning? Too be sure, there are lots of qualities and ingredients we might consider, but in examining principle #9, we will focus on the central element of opportunities. The kinds of opportunities we create for our students are the prime vehicles for their learning. Walter Doyle ( 2) has said, "Students will learn what a task leads them to do, that is, they will acquire information and operations that are necessary to accomplish the tasks they encounter." Richard Elmore and Elizabeth City distill Doyle's statement further into one of the core principles of Instructional Rounds by stating simply, "The task predicts performance" ( 1). Agreeing with these sentiments, Fred Newmann concludes that we need to focus on the "actual intellectual demands" placed on students ( 11). Powerful learning opportunities have four key components ( 13): novel application, meaningful inquiry, effective communication, and perceived worth (see Exhibit 1). Furthermore, when the opportunities teachers create have these components, we find that they both engage and empower students as well as produce deep learning ( 14).

Of course, we always want our students to be engaged. Engaged students learn more ( 5). While many factors go into creating the conditions for engagement in the classroom ( 6), when it comes to the opportunities we are creating, it is useful to consider three specific types of engagement: engagement with others, engagement with ideas, and engagement in action ( 13). In engaging with others, we recognize that learning unfolds in the company of others and is a social endeavor. We learn in, from, and with groups. The group supports our learning as well as challenges it, allowing us to reach higher levels of performance. At the same time, learning demands a personal engagement with ideas. Whereas we might be able to receive new information passively, building understanding is an active process that involves digging in and making sense. We bring ourselves to the learning moment. Sometimes this is identified as cognitive engagement, to distinguish it from mere engagement in activity ( 3). It is cognitive engagement with ideas that leads to learning. Exploring meaningful and important concepts that are connected to the world often means students want to take action. Providing opportunities and structures for them to do so encourages students' agency and power while making the learning relevant.

It may be tempting to blame students for their lack of engagement. After all, it is their behavior (or lack thereof) that we are noticing. However, research by David Shernoff found that 75% of the variation in student engagement was attributable to differences in the classroom learning context while only 25% could be explained by students' own background characteristics ( 14). Furthermore, Shernoff and colleagues found that involving high school students in thinking led to greater levels of student reported engagement in classes ( 15). These findings mirror those of other researchers assessing urban middle school students' perceptions of their teachers. When teachers engaged students in independent thinking, students recognized this as useful to their development of understanding and autonomy as learners ( 16). The importance of deep engagement and thinking opportunities for all students was also a common theme among the teachers Mehta and Fine studied in their dive into deep learning ( 7). They found that teachers who promoted deep learning viewed thinking and engagement as a necessary part of learning and as something all students were capable of. This was in contrast to those teachers who failed to engage students in deep learning consistently. These teachers were more likely to view understanding, thinking, and engagement beyond the reach of their students.

What does it mean to empower our students? Once again, this is a broad concept that includes development of student agency, self-efficacy, self-regulation, voice, identity, independence, and initiative among other things. One way to bring in all these elements is to define empowerment as supporting our students to find their place in the world. As with engagement, many factors go into creating the conditions for empowerment, when it comes to the opportunities we are creating authenticity, connected, identity, and originality.

It's hard to feel empowered when you're just learning for a test, when all you were asked to do is reproduce answers, content, knowledge, or procedures that you have been shown. Moving beyond merely reproductive tasks to those that require an original response allows students to find their voice, share their insights, and show their new understanding ( 2, 7). Furthermore, empowering students requires us to move beyond merely teaching about a subject. We need to engage students authentically in the disciplines, focusing on the processes, the ways of thinking, and the ways of uncovering new knowledge and understanding in various fields ( 4, 11). When we do so, we encourage the development of identity ( 8, 7). Students come to see themselves as mathematicians, as scientist, as historians, as artist, as writers. In short, they learn to view themselves as powerful thinkers in learners able to create new knowledge and build new understanding in the varied endeavors in which they engage. Finally, when the opportunities we create are connected to who student are as individuals, connected to the community in which they live, and allow them to stretch into the world beyond, the learning that is done no longer sits outside of them but resides within them ( 6).

What It Looks and Sounds Like

Of course, there is no one way that promoting powerful learning opportunities will look and sound. There is ample room for individuals to add their own creativity and stamp on things. The list below is a sampling of ideas that might be useful to advance your practice.

Create tasks, projects, and units of instruction that will engage students in novel application, meaningful inquiry, effective communication, and which have perceived worth to the students (see Exhibit 1).

Use the "Head + Heart = Hustle" lesson activity to find out what is personally meaningful for students (or teachers or parents). For younger children, drawing is a means by which they can express what they know as well as what they want to know. Pay attention to what they verbalize as well.

Engage students in setting and evaluating their own learning goals.

Identify an audience for students' learning beyond just you as a teacher. How might your students' learning find an audience within the classroom, beyond the classroom, and beyond the school?

Ensure learning is authentic to the discipline, that is, students are engaged in the processes of thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and knowledge creation that people in the discipline actually engage in as opposed to merely learning about the subject as an outsider.

Have students teach, explain, model, show, demonstrate their new learning to others.

Use project-or problem based learning to provide a context for student learning and allow them to develop their skills in context. Skills developed in this way are easier to retain and apply.

Involve students in the co-construction of the curriculum. This might mean bringing in students voices, interests, and questions to help shape a unit built more or inquiry than delivery of information. It might also take the form of attending to the clues found in students conversations and actions with regards to their interests and potential questions.

Focus instruction around generative topics. These are topics that are central to the discipline or domain under study, relatable and interesting to students, and pique the interest and curiosity of the teacher as well.

Use of discrepant events, "strange but true" facts, disequilibrium, or instances of perplexity to create novelty in the science or math classroom. This increases situational interest that increases student engagement and use of deep learning strategies to resolve.

Find opportunities and occasions for students to set their own directions and learning path to investigate something they want to understand and explore.

Use an investigative Case Based Learning (ICBL) approach to allow students to direct their own learning. Cases provide a meaningful context for learning, with a memorable anchoring experience on which to situate further learning. ICBL involves three phases - problem posing, problem solving and peer persuasion.

Have students generate their own analogies, metaphors, and similes to explain the concepts and ideas they are seeking to understand. Metaphorical thinking make new information more concrete and easier to imagine. When students generate their own analogies or metaphors, they are able to link the new material to what is personally relevant to them. Have students identify limitations of the metaphors as well.

Engage students in taking action by finding opportunities for students to take what they are learning beyond the classroom to make a difference in the world as advocates and/or change agents.

Attend to the issue of transfer directly rather than assuming it will just happening by employing the strategies of bridging and hugging.

Reflecting on Your Teaching

The questions below are meant to push your thinking beyond where you are currently. Perhaps they might even make you a bit uncomfortable. Pick a question or questions below that will help you better understand the effects of your actions, critically reflect on them, provoke additional questions, and/or help you think about future actions and possibilities when it comes to creating powerful learning opportunities that will engage and empower your students. If you find yourself merely explaining what you currently are doing, chances are you might be reporting more than reflecting, Select another question prompt that might take you deeper.

How might you help students to do a better job of productively engaging with others in your classroom? What skills or structures might you need to help them work on to do this more effectively?

Looking ahead in your curriculum, where might there opportunities for your students to engage in action? What might these look like?

What are the big ideas you want students to engage in this year? Why are these important to you? To the discipline? How will you help your students to see them as important?

Where, when and how are you currently allowing for student voice in the shaping of their learning in your classroom or at your school? Do you think your students would view these as significant opportunities to shape and direct their learning? How might they be further enhanced?

How can I tell if my students are developing the identity of a mathematician, scientist, artist, critic, writer (or whatever applicable identity) in my classroom? Where am I noticing it? Where might I look? What might I do to move it along?

What is a past assignment I gave or lesson I taught in which students' responses were largely reproductive? How might I bump that up so that it encouraged, allowed, and supported more of an original response from students?

Where might I make a lesson or unit more connected to the students' lives and our community?

Where and how might I take my students learning beyond the classroom?

How am I engaging my students in the authentic process of people in my discipline? What are these processes? Do my students see these processes a key part of what they are learning in my class?

Using Quick Data to Inform Your Efforts

Analyze a task or project from the perceptive of the students' "doing." Read through the task/project and make a list of the verbs that best describe what students will be required to do as they complete the task. Then, rank those verbs in order according to the amount of time students are likely to spend on each. Next, review and rate the tasks/projects in a unit based on the four elements of powerful learning opportunties: Novel Application, Meaningful Inquiry, Effective Communication, Perceived Worth. Click on the image below for further guidance.

Questions to Consider from the Quick Data:

What does the list of verbs describing what students will do in the task reveal about the task/project in terms of its learning potential?

What will students spend most of their time doing? How is this the same or different from other tasks students have been doing in your class?

How will these actions, identified through the verbs, help students develop understanding?

Where is this task or unit strongest in terms of the 4 elements of powerful learning opportunities? Where is it weakest?

Where might the task/unit be enhanced? How might you do so?

Do you think your students or your colleagues would rate the task similarly? What makes you say that?

Connection to the 8 Cultural Forces

(this section is still being developed)

Opportunities are the prime cultural force implicated by principle #9. In the lessons, activities, and units of instruction we design, we ensue that we embed them with opportunities to engage, to build understanding, to challenge misconceptions, to collaborate. We look for opportunities where we as teachers might step back so that students might step forward and assume greater responsibility for and direction over their learning.

Interactions. In any interaction we have we students, we can either encourage the student's initiative and control over their learning or we can rescue them by essentially doing the learning and thinking for them, simplifying the task, or providing solutions to their problems. Rescue denies students the opportunity to feel empowered as learners and send the message that adults don't have faith in them as learners. When we engage students with each other around ideas, we help them to develop rich understanding in a collaborative setting that allows then to explore ideas.

. One of the seven language moves is the language of initiative. Through our verbal interactions with students experiencing difficulty, we can convey to students that they are active, decision-making agents in the learning process: "How are you planning on..." "What are you wondering about?" "What did you decide about that?" or they can step in and rescue students by making these decisions for them: "What you need to do next is..."

Time. It does take more time to engage students in rich, powerful learning. However, this is time well spent as it an investment in learning that will stick, learning that will be used, and learning that helps students develop as learners and thinkers.

Expectations. We can't create effective create learning opportunities that empower our students unless we have an expectation for student empowerment as part of our teaching. When we expect our students to leave our classrooms as more empowered learners, we look for and capitalize on occasions for that happen.

. We use routines that regularly engage students with others, with ideas, and in action. This might include Making Meaning, The 3 Y's, and The 4 If's

Modeling. We are models for our students of what engaged and empowered learning might look like. Our interest in and curiosity about the areas we study in our class lay the ground work for engaged learning. Our goal setting, decision making, and initiative provide models of empowerment as a learner.

Environment. If empowerment is helping students to find their place in the world, students learning shouldn't be confined to the physical confines of the classroom or school. Be envisioning our learning taking place in the world, we help students see a larger context for learning. We also construct environments that are set up for engagement with others, ideas, in action.

"Learners must be educational decision-makers. Out of negotiation comes a sense of ownership in learners for the work they are to do, and therefore a commitment to it. Learning is an active process. Teachers can't do it for learners. Information may be imposed, but understanding cannot be, for it must come from within.
"

- J. Cook (1992). Negotiating the curriculum: Programming for learning

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#9 Engage & Empower - Cultures of Thinking in Action

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As teachers, we all want to create powerful learning for our students. Even so, most of us must accept tests as part of our teaching and students' learning reality. The good news is that there is no trade-off between providing students with rich, powerful learning and making sure students are prepared for tests.

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4. If I/we don’t do anything with these principles...what will happen?

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3. If our school takes these principles seriously, what are the implications for our school? What current and future proposals, practices, or policies are needed? Are there any wrongs that need to be righted?

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2. If our team takes these principles seriously, what are the implications for our collective action and behavior? What new actions would we take on? What current actions or behaviors might we need to change?

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1. If I take these principles seriously, what are the day-to-day implications for my teaching? What might my personal teaching actions and behaviors look like? What might I choose to do differently?