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Study shows students in ‘active learning’ classrooms learn more than they think

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Study shows students in ‘active learning’ classrooms learn more than they think

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Co-author Kestin, who in addition to being a physicist is a video producer with PBS' NOVA, said, "It can be tempting to engage the class simply by folding lectures into a compelling 'story,' especially when that's what students seem to like. I show my students the data from this study on the first day of class to help them appreciate the importance of their own involvement in active learning."

McCarty, who oversees curricular efforts across the sciences, hopes this study will encourage more of his colleagues to embrace active learning.

"We want to make sure that other instructors are thinking hard about the way they're teaching," he said. "In our classes, we start each topic by asking students to gather in small groups to solve some problems. While they work, we walk around the room to observe them and answer questions. Then we come together and give a short lecture targeted specifically at the misconceptions and struggles we saw during the problem-solving activity. So far we've transformed over a dozen classes to use this kind of active-learning approach. It's extremely efficient - we can cover just as much material as we would using lectures."

A pioneer in work on active learning, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics Eric Mazur hailed the study as debunking long-held beliefs about how students learn.

"This work unambiguously debunks the illusion of learning from lectures," he said. "It also explains why instructors and students cling to the belief that listening to lectures constitutes learning. I recommend every lecturer reads this article."

Dean of Science Christopher Stubbs, Samuel C. Moncher Professor of Physics and of Astronomy, was an early convert. "When I first switched to teaching using active learning, some students resisted that change. This research confirms that faculty should persist and encourage active learning. Active engagement in every classroom, led by our incredible science faculty, should be the hallmark of residential undergraduate education at Harvard."

Ultimately, Deslauriers said, the study shows that it's important to ensure that neither instructors nor students are fooled into thinking that lectures are the best learning option. "Students might give fabulous evaluations to an amazing lecturer based on this feeling of learning, even though their actual learning isn't optimal," he said. "This could help to explain why study after study shows that student evaluations seem to be completely uncorrelated with actual learning."
This research was supported with funding from the Harvard FAS Division of Science.

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Study shows that students learn more when taking part in classrooms that employ active-learning strategies

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A new Harvard study shows that, though students felt like they learned more from traditional lectures, they actually learned more when taking part in active-learning classrooms.

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Thinking Routines & Making Thinking Visible (resources from Ron Ritchhart/Project Zero)

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Thinking Routines & Making Thinking Visible (resources from Ron Ritchhart/Project Zero)

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Assessing thinking is a challenge because we do not think in the abstract, we always think with content. Therefore, it can be a challenge to know if are witnessing strengths or weaknesses in relation to the thinking or in relation to the content knowledge. Furthermore, thinking skills are uneven across disciplines.

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The 50-Year Fight: Solutions For Closing The Achievement Gap

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The 50-Year Fight: Solutions For Closing The Achievement Gap

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Want to check out the entire "50 Year Fight" series? Visit our landing page.
On Point is planning a new four-part series to explore the achievement gap in American K-12 schools, what's causing it - and what's working to narrow it.

"Achievement gap" refers to the disparity in academic performance or educational attainment between different groups of students.

Is the achievement gap the result of students' lack of achievement, or the lack of opportunities they're offered? What kinds of things are students working on, building and creating in classrooms? How do we define "good" and "bad" schools - and what do they mean to their surrounding communities?

Here's the series breakdown:

Part I -- What Is The Achievement Gap? (Sept. 9): "The gap" is everywhere - not just urban districts, and not just districts known for low-performing schools. We talk about why the gap between educational achievement, for white students and students of color has been so intractable, where it came from, and whether we should be calling it the achievement gap at all, or the opportunity gap. Is it about students' lack of achievement, or the lack of opportunities they're being offered?

Part II - How We Learn (Sept. 16): Rapping to learn iambic pentameter. Folding origami to learn geometry. In this hour, we explore one method of closing the achievement gap: ditching the test prep worksheets, and provide more engaging learning experiences. Scratch the rote learning and standardized test prep, and make time in the classroom hands-on instead. What kinds of things are their students working on, building, creating? What are the challenges? Could every school do this?

Part III - The Knowledge Gap (Sept. 23): Longtime education journalist Natalie Wexler joins On Point to discuss her new book, "The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System - and How to Fix It." She argues that we're not providing students who need knowledge the most access to that knowledge, particularly in the way we're teaching reader comprehension. There's a large body of research showing what works in teaching reading. So why aren't our schools using it?

Part IV - School Integration (Sept. 30): There's actually only one policy that has greatly narrowed the achievement gap across the country. And that's desegregation. In parts of the country with widespread desegregation, the achievement gap between white students and students of color (particularly black students) narrowed. It wasn't without costs for students of color - black teachers lost their jobs, community schools were shuttered, and these new desegregated schools were often unwelcoming, losses that have often been hidden/forgotten. But, African Americans who attended desegregated schools were more likely to finish high school, go on to college, and be healthier later on in life. Schools have rapidly resegregated in the past two decades, though. Why, and what's being done to reverse that trend?

We want to hear from you!

Take this survey, then join us on Mondays in September as we dig into opportunities for schoolchildren, how we learn, the knowledge gap, the history of school integration and more.

And if you have any questions or want to elaborate on any of your answers here, just send us an email at onpointnpr@gmail.com.

And, if you'd rather share your message over the phone, we've got you covered.

Call (617) 353-0683 to leave us a voicemail. We might use your message during a broadcast or online!

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The 50-Year Fight: Solutions For Closing The Achievement Gap

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Want to check out the entire "50 Year Fight" series? Visit our landing page. On Point is planning a new four-part series to explore the achievement gap in American K-12 schools, what's causing it - and what's working to narrow it. "Achievement gap" refers to the disparity in academic performance or educational attainment between different groups of students.

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Videos from NCTM 2018 Annual Meeting and Exposition

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Videos from NCTM 2018 Annual Meeting and Exposition

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Closing session: Navigate to about minute 3.

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Annual Meeting and Exposition - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

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Join thousands of education professionals for the nation's premier math education event. The largest gathering of mathematics educators in North America, NCTM's Annual Meeting & Exposition attracts the most elite group of top-level professionals in the education marketplace.

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Why schools should not teach general critical-thinking skills

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Why schools should not teach general critical-thinking skills

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Being an air-traffic controller is not easy. At the heart of the job is a cognitive ability called 'situational awareness' that involves 'the continuous extraction of environmental information [and the] integration of this information with prior knowledge to form a coherent mental picture'. Vast amounts of fluid information must be held in the mind and, under extreme pressure, life-or-death decisions are made across rotating 24-hour work schedules. So stressful and mentally demanding is the job that, in most countries, air-traffic controllers are eligible for early retirement. In the United States, they must retire at 56 without exception.

In the 1960s, an interesting series of experiments was done on air-traffic controllers' mental capacities. Researchers wanted to explore if they had a general enhanced ability to 'keep track of a number of things at once' and whether that skill could be applied to other situations. After observing them at their work, researchers gave the air-traffic controllers a set of generic memory-based tasks with shapes and colours. The extraordinary thing was that, when tested on these skills outside their own area of expertise, the air-traffic controllers did no better than anyone else. Their remarkably sophisticated cognitive abilities did not translate beyond their professional area.

Since the early 1980s, however, schools have become ever more captivated by the idea that students must learn a set of generalised thinking skills to flourish in the contemporary world - and especially in the contemporary job market. Variously called '21st-century learning skills' or 'critical thinking', the aim is to equip students with a set of general problem-solving approaches that can be applied to any given domain; these are lauded by business leaders as an essential set of dispositions for the 21st century. Naturally, we want children and graduates to have a set of all-purpose cognitive tools with which to navigate their way through the world. It's a shame, then, that we've failed to apply any critical thinking to the question of whether any such thing can be taught.

As the 1960s studies on air-traffic controllers suggested, to be good in a specific domain you need to know a lot about it: it's not easy to translate those skills to other areas. This is even more so with the kinds of complex and specialised knowledge that accompanies much professional expertise: as later studies found, the more complex the domain, the more important domain-specific knowledge. This non-translatability of cognitive skill is well-established in psychological research and has been replicated many times. Other studies, for example, have shown that the ability to remember long strings of digits doesn't transfer to the ability to remember long strings of letters. Surely we're not surprised to hear this, for we all know people who are 'clever' in their professional lives yet who often seem to make stupid decisions in their personal lives.

In almost every arena, the higher the skill level, the more specific the expertise is likely to become. In a football team, for example, there are different 'domains' or positions: goalkeeper, defender, attacker. Within those, there are further categories: centre-back, full-back, attacking midfielder, holding midfielder, attacking player. Now, it might be fine for a bunch of amateurs, playing a friendly game, to move positions. But, at a professional level, if you put a left-back in a striker's position or a central midfielder in goal, the players would be lost. For them to make excellent, split-second decisions, and to enact robust and effective strategies, they need thousands of specific mental models - and thousands of hours of practice to create those models - all of which are specific and exclusive to a position.

Of course, critical thinking is an essential part of a student's mental equipment. However, it cannot be detached from context. Teaching students generic 'thinking skills' separate from the rest of their curriculum is meaningless and ineffective. As the American educationalist Daniel Willingham puts it:

[I]f you remind a student to 'look at an issue from multiple perspectives' often enough, he will learn that he ought to do so, but if he doesn't know much about an issue, he can't think about it from multiple perspectives ... critical thinking (as well as scientific thinking and other domain-based thinking) is not a skill. There is not a set of critical thinking skills that can be acquired and deployed regardless of context.

This detachment of cognitive ideals from contextual knowledge is not confined to the learning of critical thinking. Some schools laud themselves for placing '21st-century learning skills' at the heart of their mission. It's even been suggested that some of these nebulous skills are now as important as literacy and should be afforded the same status. An example of this is brain-training games that claim to help kids become smarter, more alert and able to learn faster. However, recent research has shown that brain-training games are really only good for one thing - getting good a brain-training games. The claim that they offer students a general set of problem-solving skills was recently debunked by a study that reviewed more than 130 papers, which concluded:

[W]e know of no evidence for broad-based improvement in cognition, academic achievement, professional performance, and/or social competencies that derives from decontextualised practice of cognitive skills devoid of domain-specific content.

The same goes for teaching 'dispositions' such as the 'growth mindset' (focusing on will and effort as opposed to inherent talent) or 'grit' (determination in the face of obstacles). It's not clear that these dispositions can be taught, and there's no evidence that teaching them outside a specific subject matter has any effect.

Instead of teaching generic critical-thinking skills, we ought to focus on subject-specific critical-thinking skills that seek to broaden a student's individual subject knowledge and unlock the unique, intricate mysteries of each subject. For example, if a student of literature knows that Mary Shelley's mother died shortly after Mary was born and that Shelley herself lost a number of children in infancy, that student's appreciation of Victor Frankenstein's obsession with creating life from death, and the language used to describe it, is more enhanced than approaching the text without this knowledge. A physics student investigating why two planes behave differently in flight might know how to 'think critically' through the scientific method but, without solid knowledge of contingent factors such as outside air temperature and a bank of previous case studies to draw upon, the student will struggle to know which hypothesis to focus on and which variables to discount.

As Willingham writes: 'Thought processes are intertwined with what is being thought about.' Students need to be given real and significant things from the world to think with and about, if teachers want to influence how they do that thinking.

is head of learning and research at Wellington College in Berkshire. He is also an English teacher completing a PhD in English education at King 's College London. He lives in London.

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Why schools should not teach general critical-thinking skills - Carl Hendrick | Aeon Ideas

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Being an air-traffic controller is not easy. At the heart of the job is a cognitive ability called 'situational awareness' that involves 'the continuous extraction of environmental information [and the] integration of this information with prior knowledge to form a coherent mental picture'.

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A popular theory that some people learn better visually or aurally keeps getting debunked.

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A popular theory that some people learn better visually or aurally keeps getting debunked.

In the early '90s, a New Zealand man named Neil Fleming decided to sort through something that had puzzled him during his time monitoring classrooms as a school inspector. In the course of watching 9,000 different classes, he noticed that only some teachers were able to reach each and every one of their students. What were they doing differently?

Fleming zeroed in on how it is that people like to be presented information. For example, when asking for directions, do you prefer to be told where to go or to have a map sketched for you?

Today, 16 questions like this comprise the VARK questionnaire that Fleming developed to determine someone's "learning style." VARK, which stands for "visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic," sorts students into those who learn best visually, through aural or heard information, through reading, or through "kinesthetic" experiences. ("I learned much later that vark is Dutch for "pig," Fleming wrote later, "and I could not get a website called vark.com because a pet shop in Pennsylvania used it for selling aardvarks-earth pigs!")

He wasn't the first to suggest that people have different "learning styles"-past theories included the reading-less "VAK" and something involving "convergers" and "assimilators"-but VARK became one of the most prominent models out there.

Experts aren't sure how the concept spread, but it might have had something to do with the self-esteem movement of the late '80s and early '90s. Everyone was special-so everyone must have a special learning style too. Teachers told students about it in grade school. "Teachers like to think that they can reach every student, even struggling students, just by tailoring their instruction to match each student's preferred learning format," says Abby Knoll, a Ph.D. student at Central Michigan University who has studied learning styles. (Students, meanwhile, like to blame their scholastic failures on their teacher's failure to align their teaching style with the student's learning style.)

Either way, "by the time we get students at college," says Polly Husmann, a professor at Indiana University, "they've already been told, 'You're a visual learner.' Or aural, or what have you."

The thing is, they're not. Or at least, a lot of evidence suggests that people aren't really one certain kind of learner or another. In a study published last month in the journal Anatomical Sciences Education, Husmann and her colleagues had hundreds of students take the VARK questionnaire to determine what kind of learner they supposedly were. The survey then gave them some study strategies that seem like they would correlate with that learning style. Husmann found that not only did students not study in ways that seemed to reflect their learning style, but those who did tailor their studying to suit their style didn't do any better on their tests.

Husmann thinks that the students had fallen into certain study habits, which, once formed, were too hard to break. Students seemed to be interested in their learning styles, but not enough to actually change their studying behavior based on them. And even if they had, it wouldn't have mattered.

"I think as a purely reflective exercise, just to get you thinking about your study habits, [VARK] might have a benefit," Husmann says. "But the way we've been categorizing these learning styles doesn't seem to hold up."

Another study published last year in the British Journal of Psychology found that students who preferred learning visually thought they would remember pictures better, and those who preferred learning verbally thought they'd remember words better. But those preferences had no correlation to which they actually remembered better later on-words or pictures. Essentially, all the "learning style" meant, in this case, was that the subjects liked words or pictures better, not that words or pictures worked better for their memories.

In other words, "there's evidence that people do try to treat tasks in accordance with what they believe to be their learning style, but it doesn't help them," Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, told me. In 2015, he reviewed the literature on learning styles and concluded that "learning styles theories have not panned out."

That same year, a Journal of Educational Psychology paper found no relationship between the study subjects' learning-style preference (visual or auditory) and their performance on reading- or listening-comprehension tests. Instead, the visual learners performed best on all kinds of tests. Therefore, the authors concluded, teachers should stop trying to gear some lessons toward "auditory learners." "Educators may actually be doing a disservice to auditory learners by continually accommodating their auditory learning style," the researchers wrote, "rather than focusing on strengthening their visual word skills."

In our conversation, Willingham brought up another study, published in 2009, in which people who said that they liked to think visually or verbally really did try to think that way: Self-proclaimed visualizers tried to create an image, and self-proclaimed verbalizers tried to form words. But, there was a rub, he said: "If you're a visualizer and I give you pictures, you don't remember pictures any better than anyone who says they're a verbalizer."

This doesn't mean everyone is equally good at every skill, of course. Really, Willingham said, people have different abilities, not styles. Some people read better than others; some people hear worse than others. But most of the tasks that we encounter are really suited to only one type of learning. You can't visualize a perfect French accent, for example.

The VARK questionnaire itself illustrates this problem pretty well. One question, for example, asks:

You are planning a vacation for a group. You want some feedback from them about the plan. You would:

describe some of the highlights they will experience.

use a map to show them the places.

give them a copy of the printed itinerary.

phone, text, or email them.

But of course, any friend-having human in 2018 would email their friends to coordinate group travel, whether or not that email includes the first three elements. (Another question asks, sweetly, "You are helping someone who wants to go to the airport" and suggests different ways of giving directions, along with the option to simply "go with her." It depends on the "her" in question, one would assume!)

The "learning styles" idea has snowballed- as late as 2014, more than 90 percent of teachers in various countries believed it. The concept is intuitively appealing, promising to reveal secret brain processes with just a few questions. Strangely, most research on learning styles starts out with a positive portrayal of the theory-before showing it doesn't work.

Willingham goes so far as to say that people should stop thinking of themselves as visual, verbal, or some other kind of learner. "It's not like anything terrible is going to happen to you [if you do buy into learning styles]," he said, but there's not any benefit to it, either. "Everyone is able to think in words; everyone is able to think in mental images. It's much better to think of everyone having a toolbox of ways to think, and think to yourself, which tool is best?"

Husmann says that the most important thing, for anyone looking to learn something new, is to really focus on the material-that's what the most successful students from her study did. Rather than, say, plopping some flash cards in your lap ... "but I'm really watching the football game," she says.

Fleming did not return a request for comment by press time, but his own papers seem to warn against getting too carried away by VARK. "I sometimes believe that students and teachers invest more belief in VARK than it warrants," he wrote in 2006. "You can like something, but be good at it or not good at it ... VARK tells you about how you like to communicate. It tells you nothing about the quality of that communication."

In other words, it might help you learn about yourself, but it might not help you learn.

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A popular theory that some people learn better visually or aurally keeps getting debunked.

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These Are the Skills That Your Kids Will Need for the Future (Hint: It's Not Coding)

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These Are the Skills That Your Kids Will Need for the Future (Hint: It's Not Coding)

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Understanding systems

The subjects we learned in school were mostly static. Two plus two always equaled four and Columbus always discovered America in 1492. Interpretations may have differed from place to place and evolved over time, but we were taught that the world was based on certain facts and we were evaluated on the basis on knowing them.

Computers themselves will be very different as well, based less on the digital code of ones and zeros and more on quantum laws and the human brain. We will likely store less information on silicon and more in DNA. There's no way to teach kids how these things will work because nobody, not even experts, is quite sure yet.

Applying empathy and design skills

That absence of empathy makes it hard for machines to design products and processes that will maximize enjoyment and utility for humans. So design skills are likely to be in high demand for decades to come as basic production and analytical processes are increasingly automated.

We've already seen this process take place with regard to the internet. In the early days, it was a very technical field. You had to be a highly skilled engineer to make a website work. Today, however, building a website is something any fairly intelligent high schooler can do and much of the value has shifted to front-end tasks, like designing the user experience.

With the rise of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, our experiences with technology will become far more immersive and that will increase the need for good design. For example, conversational analysts (yes, that's a real job) are working with designers to create conversational intelligence for voice interfaces and, clearly, virtual reality will be much more design intensive than video ever was.

The ability to communicate complex ideas

Much of the recent emphasis in education has been around STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) and proficiency in those areas is certainly important for today's students to understand the world around them. However, many STEM graduates are finding it difficult to find good jobs.

On the other hand, the ability to communicate ideas effectively is becoming a highly prized skill. Consider Amazon. Though it is one of the most innovative and technically proficient organizations on the planet, a key factor to its success its writing culture. The company is so fanatical about the ability to communicate that developing good writing skills are a key factor to building a successful career there.

Think about Amazon's business and it becomes clear why, Sure, the it employs highly adept engineers, but to create a truly superior product, those people need to collaborate closely with designers, marketers, business development executives and so on. To coordinate all that activity and keep everybody focused on delivering a specific experience to the customer, communication needs to be clear and coherent.

So while learning technical subjects like math and science is always a good idea, studying things like literature, history, and philosophy is just as important.

Collaborating and working in teams

Traditionally, school work has been based on individual accomplishment. You were supposed to study at home, come in prepared, and take your test without help. If you looked at your friend's paper, it was called cheating and you got in a lot of trouble for it. We were taught to be accountable for achievements on our own merits.

Make no mistake. The high-value work today is being done in teams and that will only increase as more jobs become automated. The jobs of the future will not depend as much on knowing facts or crunching numbers, but will involve humans collaborating with other humans to design work for machines. Collaboration will increasingly be a competitive advantage.

Perhaps most of all, we need to be honest with ourselves and make peace with the fact that our kids' educational experience will not--and should not--mirror our own. The world they will need to face will be far more complex and more difficult to navigate than anything we could imagine back in the days when Fast Times at Ridgemont High was still popular.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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These Are the Skills That Your Kids Will Need for the Future (Hint: It's Not Coding)

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Understanding systems The subjects we learned in school were mostly static. Two plus two always equaled four and Columbus always discovered America in 1492. Interpretations may have differed from place to place and evolved over time, but we were taught that the world was based on certain facts and we were evaluated on the basis on knowing them.

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The Skills Needed to Survive the Robot Invasion of the Workplace

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The Skills Needed to Survive the Robot Invasion of the Workplace

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Automation is coming to the workplace.

Millions of jobs will be destroyed, but many jobs will also be simultaneously created in the process as well.

For those in the workforce - or for those just joining it for the first time - the big question is: what skills are needed to navigate this monumental shift in the economy? How will humans create value in an increasingly automated world?

The Human Touch

Today's infographic comes to us from Guthrie Jensen, and it summarizes the skills needed in 2020 and beyond to take advantage of the shifting landscape of work.

In short, for those looking to future proof their careers, building competencies in areas that machines will be unlikely to tackle effectively (i.e. complex problem solving, creativity) is likely the best recipe for success.

It can be daunting to think about automation's role in the future - but if you're a bookkeeper, legal secretary, insurance underwriter, credit analyst, or any other person in a job with high automation potential, it would be prudent to be thinking long and hard about what you can offer beyond your existing set of skills and competencies.

Here's just a quick look at automation potential of select positions, according to a study by Oxford University:

So how do we set ourselves up for future success in a world where even real estate brokers are likely to be automated?

It Starts With Soft Skills

There are many considerations for career success during a time of significant change.

However, there's a good case that skills - especially soft skills - are the most important foundation to build upon. These include things like the ability to communicate and work well with others, solve problems, and think outside of the box, as well as other aspects of emotional intelligence.

Here are some skills that experts say should be prioritized:

1. Complex Problem Solving
It's true that AI can solve problems that humans cannot - but it also goes the other way. When problem solving needs to span multiple industries or when problems are not fully defined, humans can work backwards to figure out a solution.

2. Critical Thinking
Machines are getting better at aspects of critical thinking, but humans are still able to to connect, interpret and imagine concepts in a world full of ambiguity and nuance. A lawyer can pinpoint the exact positioning to make a case for a client, or a marketer can figure out an overarching message that can resonate with consumers.

3. Creativity
Creativity requires a degree of intuitive randomness that can not yet be imitated by AI. Why did the architect design the building a certain way, and why did the musician improvise by playing a chord out of key? It's hard to explain why to a computer - it just feels right.

Other important soft skills to consider?

People management, coordinating with others, decision-making, negotiation, and serving others will all be important going forward as well.

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The Skills Needed to Survive the Robot Invasion of the Workplace

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Automation is coming to the workplace. Millions of jobs will be destroyed, but many jobs will also be simultaneously created in the process as well. For those in the workforce - or for those just joining it for the first time - the big question is: what skills are needed to navigate this monumental shift in the economy?

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The Learning Curve: How We Learn and Rethinking the Education Model

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The Learning Curve: How We Learn and Rethinking the Education Model

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In the 18th and 19th centuries, various infections, often called childbed fever, were common causes of childbirth-related maternal deaths in hospitals. In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis, a young intern at Vienna General Hospital, proposed a radical solution: Doctors needed to wash their hands. Although this solution dramatically reduced the maternal mortality rate, the medical establishment rejected and ridiculed Semmelweis, and he ultimately lost his job. Eventually, his depression, numerous angry letters to obstetricians, and increasingly erratic behavior resulted in his being committed to an insane asylum, where he died.

This story of 19th century medicine suggests an instructive parallel to 21st century education. Just as doctors and hospitals unintentionally created fatal diseases that they then struggled to treat, even as their own practices perpetuated the diseases, so have educators and schools unintentionally created learning problems-as brought to light by recent research into how people actually learn-that cannot be successfully treated unless we change the practices that create them.

The overarching problem is that too many students are not engaged in their education. Various polls consistently show a steady decline in student engagement; from 80 percent engagement in elementary school to 60 percent in middle school to 40 percent in secondary school, according to The Gallup Student Poll. The most common words students use to describe themselves in school are "bored" and "tired." Educators and critics offer many diagnoses: lack of interest and motivation, negative mindsets often based on race and gender, character deficiencies like lack of resilience and self-control and grit, short attention spans, too little creativity, and too much cheating. For many students, these diseases are intellectually and emotionally fatal, and frantic efforts to treat them have failed.

Increased standardized testing, test preparation, charter schools, government programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, STEM programs, optimistic innovations like portfolios and projects, and more technology have been developed to treat the ills that seem to impede learning, not to mention the Sisyphean efforts of countless caring teachers who struggle to motivate their students. These modifications, however, focus on the symptoms and fail to address the systemic causes. Efforts to fix the patients have failed; perhaps it's time to fix the schools. Perhaps it's time to understand the role that school designs-the structures, practices, and policies-play in creating the illnesses that we keep failing to cure.

Unlike Semmelweis, whose theory about the need for cleanliness was rejected because it lacked the scientific support that Louis Pasteur's germ theory would eventually provide, today we have ample research that suggests a mismatch between learners and schools-a mismatch between how people learn and how educators think they learn.
Emotion and Thinking
The research of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio Damasio, neuroscientists at the University of Southern California, has provided important insights into the connections among emotion, thinking, and learning that have profound implications for how we might improve our schools. One such insight is that emotion and cognition are intertwined and inseparable. "Emotion is the rudder for thought," Damasio writes in a 2007 article in the journal Mind, Brain, and Education; Immordino-Yang expands on the idea when she says, "We think in the service of emotional goals." We think and learn about things that matter to us, that are emotionally relevant because we perceive them as important to our physical or social survival and well-being.

Motivation, engagement, perseverance, creativity, optimism, resilience-pretty much all the so-called "soft skills"-are rooted in emotion. Focusing on how to teach and assess these skills as schools so often attempt to do, however, misses the point. Teachers don't need to invent strategies to motivate students. Telling them that math will matter to them someday won't make math matter today. Linking the American Revolution to current events may work with a couple of students, but it's not going to animate many.

If students' programs of study include significant, meaningful opportunities for them to follow their expanding and changing interests during their many years in school, motivation and perseverance will spontaneously combust because, as some students told me, "my interest and involvement in my studies became personal. I felt like my school had meaning, like there was purpose."
Building Neural Networks
The research of Kurt W. Fischer, former head of the Mind, Brain, and Education program at Harvard University, also supports the need to rethink school design. Schools often focus on memorization and students' ability to recall information and procedures. In contrast, Fischer explains learning as a process of building and rebuilding neural networks.

For example, as we learn a new word, we activate a network of neurons connecting many parts of the brain, including the visual cortex (that supports spelling), various motor planning areas (pronunciation), and the association cortex (meaning). If we encounter the word many times and use it repeatedly, that neural network becomes more stable and automatic so that when we need the word in the future, the network is quickly rebuilt or reactivated. If, for some reason, we have learned the word incorrectly and receive new information, we can reshape the network, although this process requires varying degrees of effort depending on the strength of the existing network.

It is this remarkable plasticity, this ability to build new networks or reshape old ones, that allows us to continue to learn and develop increasingly complex and new understandings of the world. So learning how to compute the area of a triangle or how to write a paragraph requires that we build stable neural networks for these tasks. Understanding the American Revolution involves building a network for the American Revolution, not memorizing dates and notes from teachers' lectures.

As we build these networks, as skills or concepts become increasingly complex, they constantly fall apart and need to be rebuilt. A child learning to play soccer might learn to dribble the ball well, but when she must combine dribbling with passing to a teammate running down the field, her ability to dribble regresses and must be rebuilt in the new context of passing the ball. Another child develops an understanding of numbers as he learns to add and subtract, and that understanding will likely regress as he grapples with understanding multiplication and division and how these are related to addition and subtraction. Learning is very much a process of progress and regression. In fact, regression is essential to learning because each time the learner rebuilds the network, the more stable and automatic it becomes. Regression is not failure, although it is often treated as such.
Emotional Goals, Learning, and Success
This natural process of learning-building, regression, rebuilding-requires significant effort. People typically resist putting great effort into endeavors that don't matter to them. Some students-those motivated to get good grades-may expend sufficient effort to ace a test, but they aren't going to put forth the necessary increased effort to build deeper understanding in an area that doesn't matter to them. So what matters to students? What are they learning in school that forces them to focus on what matters to adults?

Because emotional goals motivate and direct people's thoughts and behavior, as Immordino-Yang suggests, understanding students' goals can provide insight into what they are likely to learn and help educators understand how they might change their practices. Not surprisingly, different groups of students learn different things. For some students, learning new skills and concepts matters. For these fortunate few, the traditional approach to school often aligns quite nicely, for various reasons, with their goals and interests, and the result is that they successfully develop the skills and conceptual understanding that are the stuff of school.

For many others, the emotional fuel is a desire to get into college, often because they have internalized parental or cultural aspirations. They get good grades, score reasonably to very well on standardized tests, and attend college. They work hard and appear engaged in school. Appearances can be misleading, however. Engagement in school does not always reflect engagement in the sort of deep, meaningful learning-developing intellectual skills and conceptual understanding-that educators value.

Although some students learn the skills and concepts taught, for too many this learning is an illusion. Instead, they are learning the tricks and strategies for obtaining the grades and test scores that they need to please college admissions officers. In the traditional model of schooling, grades and scores are the coins of the realm. Students interested primarily in amassing these coins learn the skills that have proven most effective: strong memorization and recall techniques, how to read teachers and tell them what they want to hear, how to manage large amounts of homework using triage routines, how to use shortcuts (quickly skimming reading assignments, developing formulas for writing essays, learning techniques for guessing on certain kinds of tests), and how to cheat. This population of students suffers the most, arriving at colleges in increasing numbers with depression and other symptoms of burnout.

The goals of the remainder of students-which in many schools feels like the majority-tend to be social, not academic. Their friends and life in the corridors and cafeterias, at home, on the streets, or online are what matter most. The classroom is important only to the extent that complex social interactions bubble beneath the surface. The skills for this group include learning to get by unnoticed and developing strategies for distraction (class-clowning, rebelling, diverting teachers' attention from the lesson). Many of these do just enough to get by; others are passed along; some drop out.
Rethinking Schools
Understanding what matters to students and how they measure success is essential to understanding their behavior and what they are likely to learn. It is also important in considering how to rethink school designs and create a new conceptual model for schools-a model that combines and finds an effective balance among the goals that adults have for students and the needs that students have for themselves, a balance between what matters to students and what matters to adults.

The current model is built almost entirely on what adults believe students must know to function successfully in the world. It is an ineffective model for most students and frustrating for most teachers. The vast majority of students never associate school with deep, meaningful, personally relevant learning. People cannot become lifelong learners if they are denied the experience of meaningful learning, if they are confined to the prison of other people's interests and think of learning as memorizing and regurgitating correct answers to questions and problems that mean nothing to them.

A more effective model will offer real opportunities for students to pursue personally meaningful interests and questions. If deep engagement in learning is the primary concern of education, then schools need to cast off the traditional straitjacket of standardized graduation requirements and courseloads to create the time and opportunities for all students every year, to create some or all of their curriculum according to their interests and strengths. Offering electives, which tend to reflect the passions and interests of the teachers who create them, is an inadequate substitute. Young people need to experience school as connected, as emotionally relevant, to the lives they live and the futures they envision.

Achieving this goal does not require that adults abandon their responsibility to help students learn specific essential skills or their responsibility to expand students' sense of the world of possibilities and opportunities. Literature, history, math, sciences, the arts, and languages are important lenses through which to view the world; these disciplines offer rich opportunities for paths to future careers, good citizenship, and meaningful lives. Our country will always need scientists, engineers, historians, artists, economists, ambassadors, inventors, but we don't need to try to make all students masters of all disciplines.

Standardization tends to assume there's only one way to understand concepts or develop skills, only one solution to a problem, only one path up the mountain, when, in fact, there are many-just as there could be many, equally worthy, rigorous paths to graduation. Instead of insisting that all students collect identical promotion and graduation credits by meeting minimal standards to "pass" anywhere from five to seven courses each year in discrete, unrelated subjects, educators might be more successful ensuring that all students work each year on a body of specific essential skills-perhaps communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving, which are getting so much attention today-that can be learned while working in any subject area. Students don't need eight years of English to learn how to write well, as long as writing is always part of their programs of study.

Depending on their aspirations, some students will benefit from 12 years of math; many others will not. Some students will find enjoyment, meaning, and success in the current model of five or six courseloads of traditional and AP classes. Others will benefit from different programs of study. Some will engage deeply in two courses and an apprenticeship. A few might arrive in high school wanting to focus exclusively on becoming musicians-studying an instrument, delving into music theory and composition-and, over time, discover a desire to expand their programs to include poetry or history or psychology. One thing does tend to lead to another when people pursue their interests. The result is that when student musicians discover that history or poetry will help them become better musicians, these areas become more meaningful, and the learning becomes more powerful than in the more traditional model.

This new model combines development of specific essential skills in all students with a flexibility that allows students the freedom to create individualized, developmentally appropriate programs of study that align with their evolving interests. Some of the changes that make this new model possible involve significantly reducing the number of traditionally required courses, creating individualized rather than rigidly standardized courseloads, giving students more control of the subjects they study, and establishing graduation requirements based on skill development. Because adults continue to have a responsibility to ensure that young people have some exposure and experience in subject areas beyond their immediate interests, most students would likely still be required to take a few courses in traditional subject areas spread out over their school careers.

The primary goal of the new model is to transform the experience of school by giving students the freedom to connect learning to their emotional lives. Done right, schools will become sources of motivation and perseverance rather than hospitals responsible for treating the apathy they create. ▪

Read More
Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

"Cognitive Development and Education: From Dynamic General Structure to Specific Learning and Teaching," a paper by Kurt W. Fischer and Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

"Virtuous Cycles of Learning: Redesigning Testing During the Digital Revolution," a white paper by Theo Dawson and Zachary Stein

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Campaign fundraising takes time-and money. To ensure a smooth and successful process, schools need to build a solid foundation and plan for the long haul.
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The Learning Curve: How We Learn and Rethinking the Education Model

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In the 18th and 19th centuries, various infections, often called childbed fever, were common causes of childbirth-related maternal deaths in hospitals. In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis, a young intern at Vienna General Hospital, proposed a radical solution: Doctors needed to wash their hands.

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"Creativity: The Key To Unlocking Your Inner Scholar"

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"Creativity: The Key To Unlocking Your Inner Scholar"

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Presentation from AMLE2018

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How 1-on-1 Time With Students Made Me a Better Teacher

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How 1-on-1 Time With Students Made Me a Better Teacher

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When it happened to us, it was something to dread. Being summoned to speak with a teacher one-on-one usually meant we were in serious trouble, lagging far behind or that something terrible had happened.

I carried this perception with me during my first year of teaching. But I didn't want my students to fear having conversations with me. I was determined to flip their ideas about "talking to the teacher."

A few years later, I met a student, Tommy, who helped me learn the value of one-to-one meetings. The relationship we developed through our time together has influenced my practice to this day.

Tommy never completed his homework. He was a sweet boy who seemed to love school, but I couldn't get him to catch up on his work no matter how much I reminded him. I started to meet with Tommy a few times per week during the school day for 15 minutes while students worked on math problems. We focused on his homework, and we'd talk about other things too.

I learned a lot about his life outside of school: He looked after some of the neighborhood kids after school, while their parents and his single mom were working second or third jobs. He absolutely loved cats and dogs, though he didn't have pets at home. He could do his homework if he had time or a family member at home in the evenings to help out; but he didn't. We talked about movies, music and food.

As we worked on his assignments and got to know each other better, it was clear that Tommy felt supported, and as a result, his confidence and his scores went up. As I started to understand what motivated him, our interactions took on a new level of depth and I became a more effective teacher for him. Learning went from something intimidating that he had to do alone while I stood in front of the class, to a more relaxed, student-centered collaboration.

That year the rest of the class noticed the connection Tommy and I were developing and the fun we were having in our meetings as we worked. One of his classmates, Emily, approached me after one of my sessions with Tommy and asked to have her own regular meeting time with me.

I was perplexed-Emily didn't need help. She had support at home and did her homework every night. I asked her why she wanted to meet and she said, "So I can learn even more." I didn't have time to meet with every student regularly, so I declined. Emily always put a lot of pressure on herself to achieve great things; she'd be fine, I told myself. But she persisted.

Emily and I started to have quick informal meetings together. We reviewed her assignments, and she pushed herself further than ever. We talked about friendships, books and classwork. Our meetings surfaced how Emily's own high expectations for herself caused a significant amount of anxiety. She seemed so "together" in class-I had no idea she was struggling with this. We talked through strategies for diffusing her anxiety, and in time she began to use them. Soon, I was flooded with requests to meet one-on-one. That year, I learned just how much students crave a more personal connection with their teacher.

Learning is a very personal and emotional process. Students wrestle with what they're learning, the relationships they're developing, and the stresses of school and life. All students need to develop a strong personal connection in the classroom to do their best. Although time was tight (as it always is in schools), I discovered that to be an effective teacher I had to meet with my students one-on-one as regularly as possible-I couldn't afford not to. I kept working to squeeze in one-on-one times with my students for 15 minutes each, every two to three weeks (two students per day).

I found time while students worked on independent work after lessons, and during the time I'd usually spend grading papers. I held a meetings after dismissal for the students who attended our after-school program. I met with students during bell-ringer time in the mornings or whenever I could fit it in. I kept a list on my desk of who I'd met with in each cycle and who I hadn't.

Before long I stopped seeing my class as a group and started seeing them as individuals in full focus. Behavior improved, scores went up and I believe we were all happier. The result was a culture of trust that laid the foundation for student growth in a number of areas.

The culture of our classroom changed. I felt more connected to the students, they felt more connected to me and I was better able to help them connect with each other.

I was able to pinpoint which students needed specific help in academic areas, and could point them to other students who could help them out. (Instant, eager tutors!)

This time helped students to share their desires for their learning experience, and I designed classroom systems and projects to reflect those desires.

This is my 10th year in the classroom and I've kept up with the one-on-one meetings. In fact, I've taken them to a new level. I'm now lead advisor to 18 students ranging from eight- to ten-years-old at Khan Lab School, a small independent school in Silicon Valley. Keeping students at the center of the learning experience is core to our mission.

In our school model, one of the ways we do this is by holding weekly one-on-ones. I meet with each of my students every week for 45 minutes. During this time, I review their academic work in depth and give support and extra practice where needed. I coach them on work habits, and we talk about a variety of issues related to their social-emotional health. We start and end every meeting with encouragement and a personal greeting like a high five or fist bump.

I've found over the years that these meetings are meaningful for all students, especially for those with learning differences, behavior challenges or problems at home. When I know my students as people, I can understand what they need and can work more effectively to meet their needs.

Intentionally making strong connections with every student creates a learning atmosphere that's built on empathy and understanding. It's a humanizing practice, which has helped me to make real connections. Ask anyone to describe their favorite teacher, and inevitably they'll share a story about a time they truly felt seen, heard or understood by one. That should tell us something. Our students have a lot to say, especially when we make the time to listen.

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How 1-on-1 Time With Students Made Me a Better Teacher - EdSurge News

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When it happened to us, it was something to dread. Being summoned to speak with a teacher one-on-one usually meant we were in serious trouble, lagging ...

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Social-emotional learning (SEL) can help all students achieve - not just those who have experienced trauma or have behavior issues. SEL also creates a school culture that is "inclusive of and responsive to" diversity. Those are among the statements made Monday by a panel of educators as part of the Aspen Institute's National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development.

The members of the panel - including superintendents, teacher leaders and administrators - say that integrating SEL into academics helps teachers better manage their classrooms, but that high-quality professional development is necessary in order for teachers to develop this level of skill in teaching.

"It's about us ensuring that schools fit our kids rather than demanding that our kids fit the mold of school," Sydney Chaffee, a 9th grade humanities teacher at Codman Academy Public Charter School in Boston and the 2017 National Teacher of the Year, said Monday at an event in Washington.

​At a time when the nation is looking for solutions to violent tragedies like the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL - and debating whether it's better to arm teachers or hire more mental health professionals - the panel's statements take on greater significance.

"Essential to creating and sustaining a positive school culture is the degree to which students feel known, cared about, appreciated and included, and have a meaningful voice in the community of the classroom and the school," write the authors of " The Practice Base for How We Learn: Supporting Students' Social, Emotional, and Academic Development."

The report is a companion document to one released last fall by the commission's scientific panel, which asserted that learning is a social, emotional and cognitive process, and that when educators "deliberately and thoughtfully" connect these domains in the classroom, students benefit.

"It's not about one particular lesson, one particular framework; it's about the culture that shepherds you as a student or as a teacher toward caring and focusing on these issues," said Ron Berger, the chief academic officer for EL Education, a network of over 150 schools in 30 states. "We need to build school communities so when new kids enter, they feel, 'In my old school I could be a jerk; in this school that's not OK.'"

Avoiding burnout

The report says that as educators develop their own social-emotional competencies, they not only serve as role models for students, but might also be protecting themselves from burnout, whether they are relatively new teachers or at a later stage in their career.

The speakers on Monday's opening panel also talked about the need to include teachers' voices in the planning and implementation of SEL efforts. Jillian Ahrens, who teaches at Memorial School in Cleveland and is vice president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, said an emphasis on SEL is even built into the union's collective bargaining agreement with the district.

"It is critical that we look at how we support teachers. Teaching can be a lonely field," Ahrens said. "Adults may need to practice some of these skills."

She added that, in the classroom, simply having students work in groups doesn't mean that they are developing social-emotional skills, but that it's important in the midst of lessons to talk about issues such as respect and responsibility.

The authors also highlight the importance of consistency in SEL programs and messages to students at the school level, as well as the importance of district and state leadership to support schools through funding initiatives and standards. In addition, district-level positions dedicated to SEL - which have been increasing nationwide - can also help ensure that SEL is always considered as part of other initiatives and school operations. Sheldon Berman, the superintendent of Andover (MA) Public Schools and the moderator of the panel, said that these leaders can focus on monitoring a district's progress toward SEL goals.

In response to a question about teacher preparation, Julia Sarmiento, the SEL coordinator for the Hillsborough County (FL) Public Schools, said it's also important to include SEL in new teacher orientation programs.

Not 'one or the other'

The educators say there is a place for both explicit instruction in SEL competencies - and giving students opportunities to practice them - as well as weaving it into the curriculum.

"Every academic subject area provides opportunities for students to think through social and emotional issues," the report says. "Literature and social studies offer occasions to discuss how fictional or historical characters handled social or emotional situations, and what might have happened if they had dealt with these situations differently."

At the event, Berger stressed that because students spend so much time in school, it's better for educators to address SEL "intentionally" and not "haphazardly and poorly." He added that schools with an intentional focus are also helping students achieve and get into college.

"It's not as if you have to choose one or the other," he said. "They're synergistic is the way that when you focus on character and social-emotional skills, kids get the skills to be able to compete academically as well."

Partnerships with families as well as community-based organizations also reinforce SEL outside of the classroom and give students opportunities to apply emotions such as compassion.

"Even in the news now, we see where some students are taking action," Sarmiento said. "They are taking what they have been learning and they are having a voice."

In January, the commission released a report on its progress as well as information on what is coming during the remainder of its work. Early next month, the commission is expected to release a report that adds parents' and students' voices to the conversation.

The practices and learning environments described in Monday's report are "achievable," the authors write. "The time has come to accelerate the work of bringing the integration of social, emotional, and academic development to every district, every school, every classroom, and every student," the report says. "This work deserves a place at the forefront of our nation's education agenda."

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Social-emotional learning (SEL) can help all students achieve - not just those who have experienced trauma or have behavior issues. SEL also creates a school culture that is "inclusive of and responsive to" diversity. Those are among the statements made Monday by a panel of educators as part of the Aspen Institute's National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development.

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Integrating Curriculum for Meaningful Learning

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Integrating Curriculum for Meaningful Learning

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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In most schools, integrated curriculum is more a hit-and-miss practice than a full-scale, all-out commitment. To accomplish the goal of ensuring that "all teachers can identify the connections among ideas and fields of knowledge, as well as how their teaching relates to the courses and student activities conducted by other school personnel," as AMLE's This We Believe suggests, schools must establish protocols that help middle grades educators develop integrated lessons and units.

Getting Started

The first step in developing integrated lessons and units is to designate a planning time for teams to discuss ways to integrate each teacher's curriculum. At Lee County Middle School, we chose Tuesdays. During that dedicated time, we plan and discuss short-term and long-term integration opportunities.

Short-term and long-term units are identified according to the length of time it takes to complete the unit. A longterm unit requires two or more weeks to complete; a shortterm unit requires anywhere from one day to one week in the regular classroom. (When integrated units require a more flexible schedule so students can work with each other or with students on other teams they utilize a period called "seminar" time.)

A meeting agenda helps focus all attendees and provides a framework for more productive outcomes. One of our teams was having a hard time planning an integrated curriculum, so we worked together to construct an agenda to steer the meeting. Discussions were guided by key questions.

1. Are there any student concerns we need to discuss?

Student issues that have nothing to do with integrating the curriculum often get team members off topic; therefore, we set some guidelines:

Do not get bogged down in student issues. This discussion should be quick and specific. Remember, today's meeting is about integrating curriculum.

If you must discuss a problem or situation that concerns a specific student, do not use the student's name. Instead, discuss the behavior, situation, or problem that should be addressed.

Now brainstorm ideas to solve the problem. Once the team has come up with a plan, put it on paper and determine how it will be implemented and how often the plan will be monitored.

2. What topics or standards are we teaching next week?

Each person on the team shares what he or she will introduce or teach the following week. Team members take notes about each member's responses then review them for possible connections.

3. Is there an opportunity for any integration between or among the subjects?

Is there vocabulary that can be integrated across subject areas? Is there a concept that cuts across topics? Is there an opportunity for writing across the curriculum?

On one team, the math teacher planned to work on ratio and proportion the following week; the science teacher would teach about layers of the Earth; the social studies teacher would introduce gross domestic products, literacy rate, and economics; and the English language arts teacher would review parts of speech and strategies for reading informational text.

On the surface, none of the team members' lessons seemed the least bit related. But once we started discussing how we could connect the content and the learning, we came up with some easy and fun integration opportunities.

We discussed how to incorporate ratio into each subject's lessons. The teachers decided to begin with the vocabulary. They developed a ratio/proportion vocabulary list that each would introduce along with her own content-specific vocabulary. The integrated vocabulary was posted on a word wall with definitions and possible uses. (The same definitions are used in each class.)

Math: The math teacher's topic drove this unit, so she taught her original unit-no additional planning was necessary other than a discussion of how ratio/proportion is used in our daily lives.

The team decided science students would look at the make up of the layers of the Earth and develop ratios regarding the Earth's composition. These ratio charts would be posted in the hall and in the classroom.

Because the students were studying gross domestic products (GDPs) and literacy rates, students would be broken into small groups. Each group would study the literacy rates and GDPs of the various countries covered in their standards. They would develop ratios of literate citizens to illiterate citizens and then make inferences regarding GDP and economics based on literacy rates.

In English language arts (ELA), students were given informational text regarding GDP and literacy rates to read and determine important details and main ideas. This integration helped the social studies teacher because her students came to her having read much of the background information needed to understand her lesson.

The ELA teacher had also planned to review parts of speech; therefore, we devised a game for the students. Working in pairs on one paragraph from the informational text, students would label two specific parts of speech and develop a ratio for them.

This unit was a short-term (one week) integration. The students discussed ratio and proportion in every class. They gathered data and produced charts and graphs based on ratio, and they made inferences about a country's GDP and economic strengths or weaknesses based on literacy rates.

In most schools, integrated curriculum is more a hitand- miss practice than a full-scale, all-out commitment. To accomplish the goal of ensuring that "all teachers can identify the connections among ideas and fields of knowledge, as well as how their teaching relates to the courses and student activities conducted by other school personnel," as NMSA's This We Believe suggests, schools must establish protocols that help middle grades educators develop integrated lessons and units.

4. What will our next long-term integrated unit be?

The team examined the long-term integrated unit they planned to teach. This time the ELA teacher's curriculum anchored the unit.

The sixth grade ELA curriculum includes a study of world mythologies. Since the ELA standards do not specify which mythologies are to be taught, the team decided to use the mythologies of the countries presented in the social studies curriculum.

The students would be placed in "expert" groups for the ELA unit. Each expert group would study a different mythology and share its findings with other groups. The ELA teacher would use Greek/Roman mythologies to model what she wanted the students to learn in regard to the myths they were studying in their expert groups.

The science teacher looked at her curriculum and realized she could teach her space unit during the mythology unit. Her students would study the constellations as they relate to ancient mythologies. The students would create the "night" sky as it looked during important historical events related to their social studies curriculum. After placing the constellations in their correct positions for each event, students would compare their renderings, looking for patterns.

Since Central American countries are included in the social studies curriculum, the plan would allow the math teacher to discuss the importance of math in the building of the Mayan pyramids. Students would create scale drawings of the pyramids, research and discuss the mathematics needed to construct the pyramids, and measure the volume, square footage, and other geometrical aspects of the pyramids.

The teachers discussed the culminating task for this unit, developed a timeline for completing the unit, designated whole-team unit work days, and took an inventory of resources and supplies needed to complete the unit. Each teacher was given a specific task. During each Tuesday's integrated unit planning time, the team would reflect on the unit and make needed adjustments.

Seminar Time

Seminar time is an outgrowth of fully integrated long-term units. To complete the seminar units, the teams carve out one to two hours weekly. During these times, the students work as an entire "team" of students rather than a "class" of students.

The integrated seminar units are usually designed around themes, but incorporate skills and content from each subject. One such unit is the space museum seminar. In this seminar unit, the students study the various aspects of space, including solar system, ancient astrology/astronomy, space travel, the development of NASA, future space exploration, and other topics of interest related to space. The culminating performance task for this unit is to develop a walk-through space museum that is informative and interesting for elementary students in grades 3-5.

For six weeks the students with similar interests form cadres to research one of the topics. These cadres design displays and visuals for the museum. The displays must include written placards that show the students' research.

After each cadre's work is complete, an entire hallway is dedicated to the "museum." Students create a space walk, covering the walls and ceilings with the various visuals they've created. Eighth grade students take the elementary students through the museum, sharing information and providing opportunities for the younger students to participate in the many interactive displays.

Another seminar unit is our Iditarod unit. The unit integrates physical science very nicely because it requires students to understand force, motion, acceleration, and friction.

For background information for this unit, students read Gary Paulsen's Hatchet or Jack London's Call of the Wild in their English language arts class. These books afford the teachers and students glimpses into the worlds of orienteering and dog sledding. Students also conduct extensive research about the Iditarod.

In the social studies class, students learn about the geography and terrain of the Iditarod trail, the indigenous peoples of the regions and their traditions and cultures, and the evolution of the Iditarod itself.

Math and science students are divided into teams. Each team must construct a sled from "found" objects-most often large, cardboard boxes and lots of tape. Each team's sled must be built to provide the least friction and most acceleration because the students actually participate in a mock Iditarod.

Student research about the race is recorded on posters and informational text hung in the hallways for other students, teachers, and visitors to read.

As part of the culminating activity for the Iditarod, parents are invited to watch the race. Dogs (students with socks on their "paws" for mittens) and sled drivers line up in anxious anticipation. It is amazing to watch eighth grade boys and girls (who are usually too cool for anything school initiated) screaming and yelling with enthusiasm and excitement as they get caught up in the competition between sled teams.

Our school is team-driven to observe common planning time, team decision making, flexible scheduling, and full curriculum integration when appropriate. Seminar time was so popular that seminar time and seminar units have been adopted by many other teams in our school.

Final Thoughts

Constrained by the state-mandated curriculum, teachers often do not recognize opportunities for integrating learning. However, with intentional planning and collaboration, integrating curriculum can become second nature.

Sue Vansant is instructional support specialist at Lee County Middle School in Georgia. E-mail: VansantSu@lee.k12.ga.us

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Integrating Curriculum for Meaningful Learning

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In most schools, integrated curriculum is more a hit-and-miss practice than a full-scale, all-out commitment. To accomplish the goal of ensuring that “all teachers can identify the connections among ideas and fields of knowledge, as well as how their teaching relates to the courses and student activities conducted by other school personnel,” as AMLE’s This We Believe suggests, schools must establish protocols that help middle grades educators develop integrated...

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Battling Against Traditional Perceptions of Teaching and Learning

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Battling Against Traditional Perceptions of Teaching and Learning

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10 Tips for Launching an Inquiry Based Classroom

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10 Tips for Launching an Inquiry Based Classroom

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10 Tips For Launching An Inquiry-Based Classroom | KQED

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Inquiry-based techniques are challenging conventional ways of teaching and empowering students who might otherwise get overlooked.

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To Engage Students and Teachers, Treat Core Subjects Like Extracurriculars

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To Engage Students and Teachers, Treat Core Subjects Like Extracurriculars

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"Like a theater production, there's sense of purposefulness," said Fine. "You're working toward producing something that has an audience beyond your teachers and your peers."
SHARED SKILLS, DIFFERENT STRENGTHS
The challenge for teachers who want to tap into extracurricular engagement is to ensure students are learning the required curriculum while also making room for differentiation. Schools take different approaches to doing that.

One thing that is consistent, according to Fine, is that teachers are very deliberate beforehand. They have to know exactly what all students need to demonstrate mastery of and where they can allow students to move in their own direction.

In some cases, that means starting the class with core curriculum that all students study but branching off from there. One example Fine has seen is in a project-based humanities classroom. Students started the class by reading about the anti-communist fervor of the 1950s and McCarthyism. Then for the latter half of the semester, students were tasked with using the same rhetoric from that time to create documentary films on a controversial subject of their choice. Essentially, the project allows students to understand propaganda by making their own propaganda film.

At Clark Montessori School in Cincinnati, the last two weeks of each semester are devoted to project-based electives of the students' choosing. In courses like "Rockets and Roller Coasters" students design their own scale models of both, and visit military bases to see rockets in action and amusement parks for roller coasters.

"We let the passion of the kids and the adults drive the course and we make the academic ties as they come along," said Clark Principal Dean Blase.

For junior high classes at Clark, field study is embedded into core subject areas as well. In social studies, for example, students learn local history and then study ethnography by interviewing residents in different neighborhoods and mapping those neighborhoods.

As Fine mentioned, all of this involves deliberate course design. When students go on field studies, they're not being handed off to some museum docent or zoo volunteer; the teachers map out what students are expected to learn and discover. The planning pays off.

"It is extraordinarily rare to have a discipline issue during a field study period," said Blase. "I don't think I've ever seen a kid's head [asleep] on their desk."
THE RIGHT PACE
While project-based learning can seem like the obvious way to engage students with core subjects, another important component is the pace of learning. For students to feel passionate about a project, they first have to feel competent enough in their skill sets to tackle it, something that can fall by the wayside in a traditional school calendar.

"Not everybody is going to learn at the same rate and the same way," said Robbie Torney, a teacher at Lodestar Academy, a primary charter school in Oakland.

The day at Lodestar is broken into two parts: time for expeditionary and project-based learning, and a section of the day for literacy and math lab, where students learn core subjects at a personalized pace.

Most traditional schools teach students in a calendar-based curriculum model, meaning that at certain times of the year all students move onto the next step in curriculum. With that model, you get achievement outcomes that look like bell curves, noted Torney. But by letting students work at their own pace, they see huge gains in student achievement for all.

Torney says that teachers who guide projects in core subjects also have to be careful to make sure those projects have an impact in their students' lives. Teachers shouldn't just copy project-based curriculum from other schools without first making sure it fits with their community.

For instance, at Lodestar, kindergartners are learning about trash, which is a big issue in East Oakland. As the Black Lives Matter movement ramped up in East Oakland, ninth- and 10 th-graders at Lodestar's sister school, Lighthouse Academy, did an expedition looking at power and social change (both schools are part of the EL Education network of schools).

"Instead of just writing a paper about power and social change," they studied something local while integrating text they were reading, said Torney. The students had to present final products that covered the significance of these movements to the community.

A similar project took on a different angle at Polaris Charter Academy in Chicago, said Torney. There students studied the issue of violence in their neighborhood. Middle school students published a series of books, called the Peacekeeper Project, which documented the work of peacekeepers in their community.

Whether you call them expeditions, field studies or project-based learning, "the idea is that there's a product that is high quality that allows you to demonstrate mastery," said Torney.

They are learning core curriculum in a way that gets them highly engaged, but there's even more payoff than engagement, said Torney. The bigger outcome happens when students are in college or starting their careers.

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To Engage Students and Teachers, Treat Core Subjects Like Extracurriculars | KQED

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"Like a theater production, there's sense of purposefulness," said Fine. "You're working toward producing something that has an audience beyond your teachers and your peers." SHARED SKILLS, DIFFERENT STRENGTHS The challenge for teachers who want to tap into extracurricular engagement is to ensure students are learning the required curriculum while also making room for differentiation.

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Teaching a Class With Big Ability Differences

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Teaching a Class With Big Ability Differences

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Differentiated Instruction

Techniques for meeting the needs of students with diverse abilities and interests.

Differentiation is a method of instruction designed to meet the needs of all students by changing what students learn (content), how they accumulate information (process), how they demonstrate knowledge or skills (product), and with whom and where learning happens (learning environment).

Differentiation is not an assortment of instructional recipes. Rather, it is "a way of thinking about teaching and learning" to ensure that children receive appropriate classroom experiences, writes differentiation expert Carol Tomlinson.

How do you teach the same concepts and skills to students with diverse abilities and interests? Different learning profiles? And how do you do that in real classrooms, with limited time to plan?

Differentiated instruction is one answer that has been extensively documented (see "Recommended Resources" at the end of this post). I want to share two fundamental tenets of DI before describing specific tactics:

With that in mind, here are specific techniques you can use to meet the needs of students with a range of abilities.

1. Start Slow

Experiencing comprehensive student-centered instruction for the first time makes some kids uneasy. I'll never forget the high school girl who ate an entire roll of cherry Tums the day I introduced my choice-based syllabus. Gradually integrate a student-centered curriculum, says Dr. Kathie Nunley, by asking learners to " choose between two or three assignments " that can be completed before the end of class.

2. Introduce Compacting for High Achievers

Compacting curriculum lessens the tedium that elite achievers experience when they master concepts faster than their peers. The Gifted Program at the University of Connecticut recommends using pre-assessments to determine how these learners can skip specific chapters or activities. Then offer "mini-courses on research topics" or "small group projects" as alternatives in a compacting contract.

how they learn with others-individually, in pairs, in small groups, or with the whole class.

the difficulty levels of assignments,using menu-based tools like choice boards, or activity menus. The digital version, Interactive Learning Menus, provide links to in-depth assignment descriptions, examples, and rubrics. Content can also be curated and remixed into Learning Playlists with online tools like MentorMob and BlendSpace.

what content they study. With Literature Study Circles, an entire English class can investigate and discuss "gender and identity" by selecting one of several books hand-picked to address that theme.

what quiz questions they answer. Page one of a test might say, "Pick three of the following five questions that you're most confident answering." Students can also vote on when to complete an exam.

what, where, when, and how they learn, via individual learning contracts. Be forewarned that students need intensive instruction and patience as they compose their own contracts.

3. Provide Choice

Choice is motivating and empowering. Let students choose:

Educator Chandra Manning recommends two graphic organizers, "Who I Am" and "All About Me Gazette," for collecting information about students' interests.

Kids complete the "3-Minute Pause" reflection protocol after a lesson concludes.

Teacher-student conferences can quickly help teachers determine how learners are progressing and what further support they need.

Differentiation expert Deborah Blaz reports that student-created rubrics help instructors identify schema strengths and gaps. For advanced learners, Blaz adds an extra column with challenging criteria to her rubrics.

When creating tests, include different question types that might address students' preferences: multiple choice, short answer, timelines, matching, true or false, graphic organizers to label, and sentences that are partially completed.

Have students visually document their academic progress "by creating a 'benchmark timeline' of weekly tasks. Each Friday, students initial the timeline, indicating where they are in the task sequence."

Professor Helen Barrett defines the learning portfolio as "a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits the student's efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas."

4. Bake Assessments Into Every Class

Rewordify, a text compactor, simplifies and shortens readings so that students with diverse comprehension abilities can comprehend and discuss the same article.

To find readings that are adjusted for high, medium, or low Lexile levels, use the informational texts in Newsela, the Smithsonian's Tween Tribune, or News in Levels-the latter also provides audio versions of the articles for additional support.

Distribute Comprehension Bookmarks (see pp. 13-26) to readers who might struggle with a complex text.

Student-centered instruction is only as consequential as its assessment. Teachers need to know where kids are in their academic journey, how they learn best, and what interests them. These assessments can help:

For academic writing, temporarily supply a word bank of transitions, an essay structure graphic, or sentence frames.

The free SAS Writing Reviser, which integrates beautifully with Google Docs, analyzes essays for sentence economy, variety, power, and identifies clarity and grammar issues. Ask advanced writers to analyze and assess their compositions' sentence variety and use of passive voice, while struggling writers can use the SAS tool to diagnose fragments, run-on sentences, and dangling modifiers.

5. Provide High- and No-Tech Scaffolding for Reading

6. Offer Targeted Scaffolding for Young Writers

If learners haven't adapted to our classroom, classroom instruction should adapt to learners by experimenting with student-centered strategies.

Recommended Resources

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Teaching a Class With Big Ability Differences

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Techniques for meeting the needs of students with diverse abilities and interests.

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8 Ways to Get Real With Student Differentiation

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Last fall, the Brookes Publishing team created a little poster about student differentiation that took off in a big way. Check it out:

The poster went viral as educators shared their love for the Fair is Not Always Equal philosophy-but some teachers asked the tough questions about student differentiation.

Realistically, how can we find time to differentiate our teaching for 30 students every single day?

We also have the pressures of standardized testing. How can we check off all the boxes and still individualize learning for our students?

And they're right. It's easy to talk about student differentiation. But making it work in an actual classroom? That's another story.

Here's some practical classroom advice from four of our top teacher authors and experts for making learning in your classroom fair for every student this year.

1. Start small-focus on one change at a time.

2. Once you make a small change for student differentiation, stick with it!

3. Make a master "cheat sheet" of accommodations.

4. Team up-even if you're not officially a co-teacher.
-Nicole Eredics, author of the blog The Inclusive Class
5. Make co-teaching a true partnership.

6. Switch up your co-teaching arrangement-often.
-Julie Causton, author of The Educator's Handbook for Inclusive School Practices
7. Start a peer buddy program.

8. Make your classroom collaborative.
-Carolyn Hughes, author of Peer Buddy Programs for Successful Secondary School Inclusion
Want more? Check out the Fair is Not Always Equal blog series for even more ideas and strategies for reaching and teaching every learner in your classroom.

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8 Ways to Get Real With Student Differentiation - WeAreTeachers

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Last fall, the Brookes Publishing team created a little poster about student differentiation that took off in a big way. Check it out: The poster went viral as educators shared their love for the Fair is Not Always Equal philosophy-but some teachers asked the tough questions about student differentiation.

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One Size Does Not Fit All: How to Adjust, Acquire and Adapt Your Curriculum

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One Size Does Not Fit All: How to Adjust, Acquire and Adapt Your Curriculum

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The Value of Role-Play in Teaching Politics

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The Value of Role-Play in Teaching Politics

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To portray Democrats' views, I often shed my role as Mr. Cutler by leaving and re-entering the classroom as Dan the Democrat. Dan doesn't hesitate to answer questions about why he supports traditional liberal policies. Most of my students lean left, so often they agree with whatever Dan says. On a dime, I turn into Randy the Republican, eager to refute Dan-and before long, I am going back and forth between the two, arguing with myself.

Tips for Role-Playing

Convey the complexity of politics. Before role-playing, I tell students that whomever I portray, it's impossible to encapsulate flawlessly the mindset of an entire party, ideology, or movement. "Mr. Cutler does a great job of explaining to us that when he is in character, we should keep in mind that there are always exceptions-that it's possible for a Democrat to be pro-life and a Republican pro-choice," said one student on a recent questionnaire.

Plan ahead. While my performances may seem spontaneous, all of them require a good deal of thought beforehand, and all of them relate to a connected unit of study. I don't go as far as writing outlines, but I do research, brainstorm, and rehearse ideas. I fear that a poor portrayal could spread misinformation.

Engage with students as Dan. In this persona, I respond to Republican talking points, like how an overabundance of regulations has forced factories and jobs overseas, hurting the economy-especially for the working class. "What's really hurting the economy is how wealthy Americans and big companies are not paying their fair share of taxes," I might say as a fired-up and animated Dan. "Here, I stand firmly by Bernie Sanders, who says there is 'something profoundly wrong in America' when one out of five profitable corporations pays nothing in federal income tax."

Engage with students as Randy. I quickly turn into Randy, who explains that higher taxes prevent employers from offering more competitive wages and better benefits. "Lower the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans," Randy says, "and you will see jobs begin to return here and the middle class strengthen." When it comes to fostering discussion as Randy about a politically charged election season, my views have occasionally angered and upset students-and I'm okay with that. Teachers do students no favors by sheltering them from what millions of others think, which denies them a chance to learn how to express their disapproval (or approval, as the case may be) effectively and passionately.

Split time evenly between Dan and Randy. I'm careful to spend about equal time portraying Dan and Randy, as I don't want to give students any reason to think that I favor one over the other. At any given time, I'm also passionate about being as convincing as possible that Dan or Randy is in the right, which encourages students to rethink their own views.

Pivot to a planned lesson. For example, Randy's position on taxes leads to interest in supply-side economic theory and what Randy and Dan think about President Reagan. Afterward, with another swing of my chair, I return to being Mr. Cutler to introduce a lesson on how free-enterprise principles compare with trickle-down economics.

Embrace humor. Students love to laugh at how quickly I change roles, which shows my knowledge of various viewpoints, irrespective of my own political beliefs, which they neither inquire nor know anything about. "I pay much more attention in class when Mr. Cutler puts on these personas," yet another student wrote.

Save time for feedback and reflection. Before ending class, I leave a few minutes to discuss how things went. As Mr. Cutler, this calls for asking students whether my performance helped them better understand and relate to the material. Some students share that while they entered class with one set of beliefs, they leave more uncertain about where they stand on the political spectrum. But just as often, Dan or Randy strengthen a student's beliefs. As long as students are thinking about big issues that pertain to them and are willing and even excited to learn, I'm okay with some degree of confusion.

Encourage students to role-play. I have never asked students to role-play, though I hope to rectify this shortcoming. I'm confident that my students would enjoy this approach to learning various sides of political issues.

Do you use role-playing in your classroom to foster discussion about politics? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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The Value of Role-Play in Teaching Politics | Edutopia

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To portray Democrats' views, I often shed my role as Mr. Cutler by leaving and re-entering the classroom as Dan the Democrat. Dan doesn't hesitate to answer questions about why he supports traditional liberal policies. Most of my students lean left, so often they agree with whatever Dan says.

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Election Season: How to Find The Teachable Moments

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Election Season: How to Find The Teachable Moments

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We're in the throes of an unusually nasty and volatile presidential election season. Classroom discussions about politics can quickly get polarized and hurtful, so many of us are understandably tempted to avoid conversations with students about the election altogether. Yet is it responsible for us as faculty to avoid talking about such a vital and present topic that has grabbed our attention and is so deeply affecting our lives?

Who is not fatigued and rattled by the highly charged polarities among us? We've all seen how liberal-minded students and more conservative students dismiss each other, often with stonewalling silence or wholesale repudiation. These experiences don't reflect our professed beliefs in meaningful discourse or help us feel better about the situation.

Then, consider that we, too, may have deeply held beliefs about particular candidates, which can leak out in unexpected (or intentional) ways. Students whose perspectives differ from our own pick up on the tiniest clues and shut down. In the liberal-leaning world of education, we often hear rumblings in our schools about how conservative students in particular feel silenced and marginalized. We tend to sympathize, but not as much as if the tables were turned and more liberal viewpoints were similarly quashed.

Cultural Transitions, Changing Demographics

School communities are often a microcosm of our country's experiences. The 2016 election is a visible, audible symbol of the significant cultural transitions we're facing. It's both exciting and scary when we're all careening down rapids in a rowdy and crowded vessel, uncertain about what that rumbling sound is we hear downriver.

We are living in a time with a bewildering number of ethno-racial categories and traveling "a short road to a population diversity never before experienced by any nation," as described by the Center for Public Education. We are still learning how to describe what it's like to live amid such social change. As sociologist Richard Alba has written in the New York Times, "Our society, transformed by immigration and new forms of assimilation, hasn't yet developed the vocabulary to capture the nuanced realities of this evolution."

In the absence of such a vocabulary, some people lash out while others shut down. Most of us feel stirred up, but don't know how to talk about it without being shouted down by others who are eager to wield the blunt instrument of monolithic truths. The changing demographics produce deep anxieties about inclusion and diversity - among those who welcome the changes as well as those who abhor them.

Finding Common Values

Each of us as faculty (and citizens) holds a paddle on this careening boat. First, we need to become aware of our own liberal or conservative biases. Then, we must understand how we are jostled by views that differ from our own. Equipped with self-awareness, teachers can help students lean back from the polarized arguments that paralyze learning and lean in toward true dialogue.

One route is to facilitate small-group and whole-school conversations to answer key questions:

As we go through this election season , what are our school community's overarching values, those that supersede differences in political viewpoint?

What core values can anchor us in a place of safety and connection?

Work to find what you all value in common to talk about differences. Dig deep and then help students and faculty articulate what pulls the school community together. This conversation must not shut down students who don't share the beliefs of the majority within your school, but rather afford all students a chance to talk about what they believe and how they arrived at that belief.

How to Help Students Open Up

In the classroom or in small groups, have students practice deep listening. To start, pair students up and create simple ground rules for the exercise:

Have one tell the other, "I'd like to understand your point of view. Please tell me more how you have come to that belief."

Don't interrupt.

Don't argue.

Ask students to repeat back what they heard the other person say.

Have them keep trying until the speaker feels that the listener has heard what was actually said, free of interpretation or added spin.

Just listen and encourage students to talk about how they came to their beliefs. All of you may be surprised at how difficult this is, and yet how effectively it can deepen understanding, empathy, and a sense of safety.

Teachers need to be alert to protect more conservative students from shutting down. Be attentive to the urge to dismiss a student whose views you don't agree with. Make clear to all students that the focus is not on name-calling about candidates but on the issues and policies they advocate and the reasoning process that leads a student to their values and convictions. Again, this involves asking, "How did you come to that perspective?"

How you ask this question is crucial. Tone can convey either genuine curiosity or a judgmental challenge to the student to justify himself or herself. Strive for the former tone. Be aware of whether your intention is to open up or shut down the student. We move ourselves and our students toward the learning edge when we ourselves are listening with true curiosity and compassionate interest.

How to Foster a Sense of Safety

Another approach is to focus on membership by asking each person, student, and faculty member a few main questions:

What gives you membership in your home, in this school, in your community, in our nation?

In this school, who feels like a valued member and who does not?

Who feels alienated and why?

What makes you feel part of the school community?

What can surface in these conversations is how terrorized some students feel by the current political discourse. Students from disempowered groups may worry they and their families are in danger of being deported; they may feel reluctant to express in the school community who they truly are and where they come from. Can we listen to these fears without dismissing them, without rushing to reassure? The more we are able to hear the full story of their anxieties, the more quickly we can establish a sense of safety and wholeness at school.

Are middle schoolers too young for such conversations? No. Middle-schoolers are struggling to understand and articulate their own values and identities. A presidential election with both a female and a male candidate will likely resonate for students in all grades, offering contrasting - at times conflicting - images about male and female identity and possibilities.

Building Strong Connections

When you open up courageous conversations like these, students begin to see that love and mutual respect are more powerful than any rapids, bigger than any social upheaval. Your school community and the connections within it can carry you through what is otherwise disorienting and frightening chaos.

With a new awareness of what holds us together as a human family, what holds you together as a school community, you will have given your students their own paddles to navigate the many rapids they will inevitably face in their lives.

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Election Season: How to Find the Teachable Moments

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We're in the throes of an unusually nasty and volatile presidential election season. Classroom discussions about politics can quickly get polarized and hurtful, so many of us are understandably tempted to avoid conversations with students about the election altogether.

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How Might We the Content?: Applying Design Thinking in a High School English Classroom

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How Might We the Content?: Applying Design Thinking in a High School English Classroom

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. . we forget that we can be playful and try wild ideas in the pursuit of academic learning . . .

Empathy-fueled, human-centered problem solving is picking up tremendous traction as of late, thanks in no small part to fantastic introductions to design thinking's educational value from Thomas Riddle and Susie Wise on Edutopia.

Three years and counting into my journey with design thinking, Mary Cantwell's DEEPdt process serves as my springboard, Twitter community #dtk12chat, my comrades in ideating arms, and the Mount Vernon Institute for Innovation's FUSE experience as resonating reminder, I'm in a constant state of vision and revision with integrating DT into my teaching. Rather than seeing this cycle as a reason for frustration - as one might think after three years of deep investment (pun fully intended) - design thinking continues to infuse me (the puns keep coming) with hope and enthusiasm.

DEEPdt plays well with content area teaching because it so well mirrors Bloom's Taxonomy and guides students toward higher order thinking. (Other design thinking frameworks do as well - I borrow tools, protocols, and ideas from others all the time - DEEPdt just happens to be the one that suits my brain and my users best.)

DISCOVER. Here students delve into the content knowledge. What do we need to know about ________ in order to solve ___________?

What do we need to know about George and Lennie in order to design a homestead that will meet their needs? What do we need to know about their character traits? What do we need to know about argument in order to craft editorials that compel readers to take action? What do we need to know about commas and indicators for pause in order to craft speeches that achieve a particular tone?

And still there are other questions that invite inquiry and discovery into our problem solving. What might we need to know about writing structures and formats? What might they need to know about literary devices? What might they need to know about the current vocabulary or the grammatical devices at play? What might they need to know about the character or plot in a given text? What might they need to know about the symbolism or metaphors employed?

EMPATHIZE. And here we identify the point of view of the users involved. Those users might be readers of essays and stories or the audience of speeches, presentation and debates. They might also be the characters in a novel or the speaker of a poem.

Writing as an act of problem-solving begins with the basic premise that a writer is a designer, so long as one considers the act of writing an audience-centered experience rather than an author-centered one. When we write for ourselves, we our meeting our own needs. Whenever we write for others, there is audience and thus, user. Sometimes those users are the teachers, sometimes peers and community, sometimes a less defined, yet far more public readership.

Reading as an act of problem solving begins with the basic premise that the subject of the text - whether protagonist or antagonist, fictional or non - has been placed in those circumstances, on that page, with intention on the part of the author. Understanding that subject's motivations in light of the conflicts present, his or her character traits and extent of development, the structure of the plot may yield tremendous insight into the themes of the text. The uncovering of the author's intentions and application of that author's techniques and ideas in unique ways, particular those that solve problems raised in the text, opens all sorts of possibilities for ways to demonstrate understanding.

How might we design a sanctuary for Melinda of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, an alternative closing argument for Harper Lee's Atticus, a collateral-damage-proof plot for Hamlet's revenge?

How might we stage Romeo & Juliet in a way that casts them as the villains and the rest of the cast as their victims? How might we use Fitzgerald's language as commentary on 2016 celebrity culture? How might we transform the words of Ellison and Hughes into lyrics for socially conscious hip-hop?

EXPERIMENT. Self explanatory yet sometimes we forget that we can be playful and try wild ideas in the pursuit of academic learning. Here we might substitute "how might we . . .?" with "what if . . .?"

What if students write three intentionally terrible introductions, share them with their classmates, and identify the trends across them that let us know they are terrible? What if they organize those trends and create cheat sheets to help them. How might the guides they create become tools for their peers in the future?

What if students crafted twenty memes in twenty minutes as pre-cursor to a close reading, text-based discussion? What if those memes became the jumping on points for discussion and points of critical discourse?

What if students employed LEGO constructs as a means of demonstrating the rhetorical structure of a poem and used more elaborate constructs to represent entire collections of verse?

PRODUCE. Rather than looking at production as an end point and a point for grading, design thinking emphasizes feedback, the opportunity for revision and new iterations. It plays along gloriously well with the writing process and one might argue even enhances that process as the goal is reaching an audience through intention, rather than simply going through the motions of a process.

How might we provide meaningful feedback that balances critique with encouragement? How might we inspire new ideas and possibilities with our feedback? How might documenting our writing process help us to identify our intentions with each revision? How might we link our revisions to particular feedback in order to assess the value of both the change and the feedback given? How might effective citations help us learn where one another's ideas came from and help us to be better critics of one another's ideas?

The above are just a few ways to tackle English language arts curriculum through the lens of design. Some have been robust explorations I've done with students, others one day sprints, and yet others notions and fancies that I've just yet to find the time to put into practice.

And they all started with, "How might we . . .?" each representing an opportunity for inquiry and possibility, solution and iteration.

Dan Ryder is an educator, improviser and design thinker from the foothills of western Maine who spends every day trying to make the world a little more interesting than he found it. A moderator of #dtk12chat and #edchatme, follow him @wickeddecent on If you like what you've read, be sure to hit recommend below, to pass the story along to your followers! As always, consider following The Synapse for more authentic voices in Education! , I, and . Keep tabs on his efforts to walk the talk on his classroom blog at flight307.blogspot.com and with his co-conspirators Jeff Bailey and Matt Drewette-Card at Wicked Decent Learning.

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How Might We the Content?: Applying Design Thinking in a High School English Classroom

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we forget that we can be playful and try wild ideas in the pursuit of academic learning . . . Empathy-fueled, human-centered problem solving is picking up tremendous traction as of late, thanks in no small part to fantastic introductions to design thinking's educational value from Thomas Riddle and Susie Wise on Edutopia.

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Why Design Thinking Isn't Just for Techies

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Why Design Thinking Isn't Just for Techies

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I was really intimidated when I first heard about design thinking. I also had a lot of questions: What is design thinking? Isn't it just for techies? How is this relevant to my elementary school-level classroom?

The epicenter of design thinking is the d.School at Stanford. According to the d.School, " ... design thinking is a methodology for creative problem solving. You can use it to inform your own teaching practice, or you can teach it to your students as a framework for real-world projects." Founded in 2004 by a few Stanford professors including faculty director David Kelley, the d.School offers courses to all students at Stanford, no matter their major. They also have made their approach available to a variety of industries, including education.

In schools, design thinking complements inquiry- and project-based approaches to teaching and learning.

Schools often assume that design thinking is a "techie thing" and send their edtech coordinators and directors to design-thinking workshops. Although design thinking has been adopted widely by the tech industry, its approach can be applied by any organization that wants to adopt a way to solve problems empathetically and collaboratively. In schools, design thinking complements inquiry- and project-based approaches to teaching and learning.

I had the privilege of attending a couple of deep dives into design thinking at Stanford's d.School. When I attend workshops, I'm always thinking of ways to bring back what I've learned and make it relevant to my colleagues and students. My aha moment came when I realized that, like the scientific method, design thinking is just another inquiry cycle that guides students by giving them steps to conduct research. While the scientific method is focused on sciences such as chemistry and physics, design thinking is a social-scientific approach to solving human-centered problems. Its main driver is empathy,a skill you can build and foster in your classroom.

The Inquiry Cycle

If you're like me, the steps of the scientific method have been thoroughly imprinted on your brain since middle school. Like the scientific method, design thinking has discrete steps that guide students through the inquiry cycle.

1. Empathize: Choose one topic and ask lots of questions. What's your least favorite chore? What don't you like about it? How does it make you feel? Dig deeper with why questions: Why does it matter to you? Why do you do it?

2. Define: Now that you've empathized deeply, what information stands out? What is the person struggling most with, and how can they accomplish their goal?

3. Ideate: What type of solution do you want to offer that person? A tech product? A script? A plan?

4. Prototype: What can you create for this person that will meet their needs?

5. Test: Go back to the person and ask them to test it out. Does it meet their needs?

(Source: Stanford d.School)

Now, let me break it down so you can see how it aligns with an inquiry cycle you're already familiar with. I've included concrete examples and student artifacts to help you draw connections to your own teaching.

Step 1: Empathize.

When you make observations and ask questions using the scientific method, you are empathizing, which is the first step in the design-thinking cycle. In design thinking, empathizing with the person you're helping requires you to ask questions to better understand the issue you're attempting to solve. Empathizing helps us practice how to ask questions and engage each other in meaningful conversation without judgment.

A group of my second-graders wanted to explore the topic of deforestation. They started by writing questions so they could focus their inquiry and dig deeper. (Notice the bubbles on the white paper, pictured left.)

They asked, Who is deforestation affecting? Why do people cut down trees? How can people protect them? What happens when all the trees are cut?

Then, they used Post-it Notes to document answers to their questions that they found in books and through interviews. This was a great opportunity to talk about primary and secondary sources of information as well as to practice asking questions without judgment.

Step 2: Define.

Once students collect the information (empathize), they move on to defining the issue. This is similar to a hypothesis in the scientific method. In design thinking, defining the issue means that you're finding some strong trends in the information to make a "needs statement." The information is showing you a strong need, and the statement will help students focus on a specific issue to solve for a person. Check out this second-grader's needs statement:

"Racist person needs a way to mend their relationships to build a community with equal rights."

Notice the verbs "mend" and "build." It's really important that the needs statement is actionable. Verbs are a key component to writing a needs statement.

Steps 3 and 4: Ideate, and Prototype.

After students zero in on a specific "need," they begin the ideating and prototyping phases. Similar to testing your prediction in the scientific method, this is when they create models to meet the need identified in the needs statement. In these phases, it's important to give students a range of tools to get creative, such as a variety of paper, pens, recycled materials, tape, ribbon, and so on. The prototype can be anything from a drawing, a script for a play, a how-to manual, or a Lego model.

This student prototyped a robot that will run errands for a family member. Design thinking allows students to use their imagination in creative ways. Students empathize deeply with someone they know or an issue they're passionate about. As a result, your students are motivated to communicate, collaborate, plan, write, and revise.

Step 5: Test.

Finally, students test by connecting back to their "user" to get feedback on their prototype. During this phase, we practice how to receive feedback. We talk about not getting defensive, being open to suggestions, and asking more questions. This phase connects back to our discussion on empathy, which is the central driver of design thinking.

Give It a Try!

My fellow teachers, please don't be intimidated by design thinking. If you're familiar with the scientific method, you can integrate this cycle into your teaching. It's collaborative and empathetic and challenges the designer to listen carefully to another person's needs. Listening with empathy is central to the process, and I strongly believe it's a skill that is transferable to any situation.

You may want to use it with your students to redesign their homework experience or their seating arrangements, solve issues on the playground, or negotiate responsibilities in the classroom. Have a look at this Virtual Crash Course Playbook provided by the d.School to help guide you through the cycle. I created a kid-friendly version of this document to introduce design thinking to my second-graders. Design thinking is an inquiry cycle that can help students dive deeper into our relationships with each other, foster deep empathy in our classrooms, and, ideally, lead to real change in our lives and communities.
Top image courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action.

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Why Design Thinking Isn't Just for Techies

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I was really intimidated when I first heard about design thinking. I also had a lot of questions: What is design thinking? Isn't it just for techies? How is this relevant to my elementary school-level classroom? The epicenter of design thinking is the d.School at Stanford. According to the d.School, " ...

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Hackschooling makes me happy | Logan LaPlante | TEDxUniversityofNevada

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In This Classroom Knowledge is Overrated

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In This Classroom Knowledge is Overrated

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Sugata Mitra is looking for a question.

"We need a really strong, powerful question," he says to a couple dozen fourth graders at John B. Russwurm PS 197, an elementary school in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. The students, who are scattered cross-legged on the floor of the classroom, eagerly shoot their hands into the air.

Mitra calls on a boy in a t-shirt. "Let's hear your question."

He stands up. "I want to know, why do dogs chase cats?"

"I've never thought of that before," Mitra replies, scratching his head before calling on another student.

"How come father seahorses have babies and the females don't?"

And another.

"How do you make a computer?" a young girl shouts.

Mitra, a researcher at Newcastle University and winner of the 2013 TED Prize, ponders the suggestions for a moment, before deciding the first-why do dogs chase cats?-to be the most intriguing of the bunch. He informs the students they'll have 20 minutes to find the answer to the question, but under a few conditions. First and foremost, they can't talk to adults. Second, with 24 students and only six computers in the room, they're going to have to form groups and work together. And lastly, they can and should read each other's answers.

"I tell them if they want to see what another group is doing they can just walk across the room and look," he says. "Children often say this is cheating, but I tell them no, it's not called cheating, its called sharing."

Mitra and his students are in the middle of demonstrating a SOLE session. SOLE stands for Self Organized Learning Environment. It's a new teaching technique developed by Mitra as a way to encourage children to have autonomy in their learning process. Teaching using the SOLE method involves an educator posing a big question and students self-organizing into groups so they can research the answer using online tools. The classroom Mitra and his students are in is the first SOLE Lab to open in the United States, though he's opened six others in England and India since 2013.

At PS 197, every grade will cycle through the lab once a week, but fourth grade will go every day for science classes. Natasha Spann, the school's principal, explains that the core curriculum that the teachers follow will remain the same, but the teaching technique will change. "It's hard for teachers to sit on their hands," she says. For instance, students in kindergarten might be learning about trees, so the big SOLE question could be something like, can we eat the bark of a tree? Or students in third grade, who are learning about world geography might be asked, how can animals reshape the landscape of a geographical region? The goal of these big questions is to prompt students to think about a subject matter holistically.

Natalia Arredondo, a PhD student under Mitra at Newcastle University who will be running the SOLE lab at PS 197, says the school will continue to assess students the same way as before (i.e. traditional tests), though she admits that's not ideal (Mitra is currently working on assessment experiments at his Newcastle Lab). "Once you allow the Internet into the examination room, the skills to be tested need to be changed," she says. "'Googleable'" knowledge becomes obsolete and the skills to find things in the internet, to be able to discern the information for accuracy and relevance, become more important."

Mitra describes SOLE as "learning at the edge of chaos," and indeed, as the students break off into self-chosen groups, a wild chatter fills the room. It looks disorganized, and remains that way for a few minutes. But the students quickly settle down and begin to type the exact question Mitra posed into Google: "Why do dogs chase cats?" On Google, a little box pops up with a brief explanation from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The children dutifully scribble the few sentences down onto jumbo pads of paper. Some groups navigate to YouTube to watch a video. Nearly all of them write something similar.

I point this out to Natalia Arredondo, a PhD student under Mitra at Newcastle University who will be running the SOLE lab at PS 197, and she nods and says that's totally normal. "When they do their presentations they start finding conflicting information," she says. "That's where the learning takes place."

Mitra is something of a heterodox in the education world. You might know him from his blockbuster TED talk in 2013, in which he describes his famed hole-in-the-wall experiment (the one that inspired the story of Slumdog Millionaire). In 1999, Mitra cut a hole in the wall of his office building, which bordered the Kalkaji slum in New Delhi, and filled it with a computer. Mitra was curious to see how children, with no prior knowledge of how a computer works, might react to this piece of technology that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Turns out, they took to it instantly. The children were able to teach themselves how to use the computer without instruction. They even began teaching themselves basic English so they could use search engines and email.

Mitra began running more ambitious experiments in other underdeveloped communities. In 2010, he loaded a computer with educational material about molecular biology-in English- and dropped it off in the Indian village of Tamil Nadu. The children, ages 10 to 14, spent the next 75 days familiarizing themselves with both the computer and its contents. When Mitra returned, he gave the children a test to see how much progress they made, and found that they could answer one in four questions correctly. He again left them to their devices, but this time with a local teacher who would casually guide the conversation and answer questions. When he returned a second time, the students could answer 50 percent of questions correctly and had a working understanding of concepts like DNA, chromosomes, and heredity.

These findings led Mitra to the theory that has come to define his professional career: Kids don't need teachers in order to learn; they simply need each other-and an internet connection. Mitra, like fellow radical education proponents, believes the industrial-age educational system is on the cusp of extinction.

"I have serious doubts about whether the traditional teacher-mediated model of learning will survive the next ten or fifteen years," says Richard Elmore, a professor at Harvard's school of Education. Replacing it will be a technology-enabled style of learning that allows children to access multiple resources for education-think SOLE sessions or Kahn Academy lessons-at their own pace, driven by their own curiosity.

This style of teaching-or, perhaps more accurately, not-teaching-is often referred to as "minimally invasive education." Mitra believes that the internet has made our collective knowledge base so vast and accessible, it's no longer helpful or necessary to sit children in rows and pour facts into their brains. Mitra calls this old method of teaching "just in case" education, and in his view, it's a waste of time. There's no need for a teacher to explain how a volcano erupts because if students need to know, they can look it up online.

Elmore believes that educators tend to underestimate how well children can self-regulate the learning process. It comes down to a retraining of sorts-reminding people that learning isn't about memorization but about knowing how to access and analyze the wealth of information available. "The real argument is whether we want to develop a generation of people who have mastery of their own abilities to learn, or whether we want to perpetuate our obsession with training people to reproduce from memory what the current generation of adults thinks they should know," he says.

Mitra likes to say "knowledge is obsolete," which is really just a provocative way to say that facts and memorization are no longer relevant. That provocation has earned him some skeptics who believe the rhetoric behind SOLE and the Hole In the Wall has been inflated beyond its effectiveness. "When I read something about knowledge being obsolete, it bothers me," says Punya Mishra, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University. "It's not about just looking up facts. A big part of learning is developing knowledge structures, ways of thinking, and forms or representations of that knowledge. And those don't come easy."

Leaving children to figure those things out on their own is too big a burden, Mishra says, adding that he does believe that independent, open-ended learning is a good thing as long as there's a teacher to frame the problems and the answers in a productive way. There's a skillset a child must possess in order for self-guided learning to be effective. When you give a 9 year old access to the internet, it requires a level of digital literacy. Anyone can pull up a Wikipedia page to find an answer, but is that really the best source? And once a child has that information, how can you ensure he or she has more than just a superficial grasp on it?

Mishra recalls a moment when his son was a freshman in high school. He was learning about unit circles in his advanced math class and was struggling to understand the concept. Mishra told him that he should do some research on the internet to get more context. "I came back and he's reading the Wikipedia page," Mishra recalls. "And I said, why are you reading the Wikipedia page? You might as well read the textbook." He son replied that he didn't know what else to look for, so Mishra sat down and Googled "unit circle simulation." "Suddenly a whole new world of the internet appeared in front of him." It's not his son's fault that he didn't find this information on his own, says Mishra, he just "doesn't know what he doesn't know."

Back in the classroom, the groups of students stand up one by one and present what they found. As they read from the over-sized sheets of paper, a few children stumble over words and are helped by their classmates. I ask Arredondo what the kids are learning at this point, considering most are simply repeating what the group before them read. She tells me they're learning how to put a presentation together as a team, how to speak in front of their peers, and honing their reading comprehension, writing, and critical thinking skills.

With SOLE, Mitra wants to instill in kids what he calls "21st century skills," which is his way of describing qualities like creativity, critical thinking, and social communication. These are skills held in high regard in places like Silicon Valley, but that are difficult to measure objectively. Looking around the room at PS 197, it's hard to say whether the 24 students chattering away in circles will be more prepared than their peers at other schools; neither Mitra nor Arredondo, nor even Principal Spann, can predict how well-equipped these kids will be in ten years' time. But they can be hopeful. "Who knows," says Spann. "Maybe we'll get an inventor from our school."

Mitra, for his part, believes his teaching style will produce a smarter, more innovative generation of children-one that is uniquely capable of adapting to the world around them. "If knowing becomes obsolete I think it'll leave us with space for something that is perhaps more important, which is creating," he says.

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In This Classroom, Knowledge Is Overrated

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Sugata Mitra is looking for a question. "We need a really strong, powerful question," he says to a couple dozen fourth graders at John B. Russwurm PS 197, an elementary school in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. The students, who are scattered cross-legged on the floor of the classroom, eagerly shoot their hands into the air.