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Previewing the content to build equity and connections to our students.

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Our students create a diverse learning community and a true love of learning.

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Poverty can be addressed by providing great educational opportunities.

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Students have a natural curiosity!

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By getting to know all our students will assist in making connections to make content relevent

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By getting to know all our students will assist in making connections to make content relevent

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Connect the content to what is important to the students, something that they draw on and relate to the new materials that they are learning.

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Students learn by doing

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Our students have many life experiences to share and we need to connect to those experiences and 21st century skills to engage them.

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Our students have many life experiences to share and we need to connect to those experiences and 21st century skills to engage them.

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Take time to understand the student and what each individual student brings to the table in terms of talent and experience.

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Our students bring the the classroom culturally different experiences that we can use to advance learning in the class.

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Students learn best in an environment that is safe and accepting of them. Building relationships and encouraging students to do their best.

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Boredom & sense of irrelevance. Connect the learning to their own lives through hand on projects. 

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Boredom & sense of irrelevance. Connect the learning to their own lives through hand on projects. 

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Students learn best by actively participating and having a shared responsibility for their own learning.

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Students learn best by actively participating and having a shared responsibility for their own learning.

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Our students bring a diversity to our community and most of our suburbs do not. We don't need to talk about African or Spanish speaking students in the abstract ... 

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Our students bring a diversity to our community and most of our suburbs do not. We don't need to talk about African or Spanish speaking students in the abstract ... 

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Students see their environment with a fresh lens.  We can learn from them.

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Our students learn best when adults have a vested interest in the students they teach, hold them to high expectations and create a safe orderly and caring environment.

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Students face poverty and resources

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The lack of educational importance at home is a major obstacle many of our students face. As educators building relationships with our kids and showing them the opportunities and doors that can be opened by getting an education

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Look for opportunities to increase student voice

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Look for opportunities to increase student voice

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Lack of basic human needs- i.e financial resources, food, housing. At school, we can make sure they have access to personnel who can acquire the community resources- any wraparound services available to us.

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Lack of basic human needs- i.e financial resources, food, housing. At school, we can make sure they have access to personnel who can acquire the community resources- any wraparound services available to us.

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Poverty, absentee parenting,  lack of academic support. We can advocate for resources, support them emotionally and provide after school programs to fill in gaps.

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Poverty, absentee parenting,  lack of academic support. We can advocate for resources, support them emotionally and provide after school programs to fill in gaps.

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If they can connect it to their real life.

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If they can connect it to their real life.

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The challenging of low expectations from the adults that are suppose to have their best interest in mind.

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Students learn best when they are engaged in the activities.  We need to make lessons fun and exciting.

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Building a trusting relationship with one's students is the foundation of their learning. Students work harder for teachers they like.

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Building a trusting relationship with one's students is the foundation of their learning. Students work harder for teachers they like.

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Students are facing poverty and lack of resources beginning at an early age. We can address these issues by meeting the students at their academic level and providing supports to foster learning.

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trauma, poverty--we need to be empathetic to the fact that they come to school to be safe and to be cared for in many ways.

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Start with student interest & experiences.

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Start with student interest & experiences.

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Willingness to share,

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They are motivated. They want to learn. 

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They are motivated. They want to learn. 

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being engaged in the learning, and actively taking part in the learning

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They learn from each other and we need to offer opportunities for everyone's voice

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Use current information to adapt curriculum

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By haveing a good relationships with teachers

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When teachers plan LEARNING EXPERIENCES for students

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When teachers plan LEARNING EXPERIENCES for students

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Learn about the different cultures in room 

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Learn about the different cultures in room 

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Get them excited about the content and learning.

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Get them excited about the content and learning.

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They learn best by knowing the relevance 

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They learn best by knowing the relevance 

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Their background knowledge is often very different from ours and relevant for perspectives. Having the chance to speak is a motivator.

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Their native language. Culturally rich material

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Their native language. Culturally rich material

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Poverty, building the relationships with families to help them get the resources they need, also being empathetic to students as to why they are not being academically successful

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Form relationships with the students and allow them to share,.

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My students learn best by doing the work with their own hands...working in groups

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Students face povery and we need to help parents and chidlren alke and get them resorces.

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Studies show that varying your study methods and materials will improve your retention and recall of information, and enhance your learning experience. The "learning pyramid", sometimes referred to as the "cone of learning", developed by the National Training Laboratory, suggests that most students only remember about 10% of what they read from textbooks, but retain nearly 90% of what they learn through teaching others. The Learning Pyramid model suggests that some methods of study are more effective than others and that varying study methods will lead to deeper learning and longer-term retention.

Lecture

The Learning Pyramid suggests that "Lecture" is one of the most ineffective methods for learning and retaining information. Lecture is a passive form of learning where you simply sit back and listen to information being spoon fed to you by your teacher or professor. Attempting to acquire information and gain understanding only through lectures is not the most effective way of learning. However, auditory learners tend to find lectures more stimulating and educational than students who have non-auditory learning styles. Lectures are most effective when students arrive to class prepared, actively participate in class discussion, and take good notes.

Reading

While more effective than Lecture, Reading is still one of the less effective methods for acquiring and retaining information, according to the Learning Pyramid. However, if you are a visual learner, reading textbooks will likely be a more effective learning method for you than for students with non-visual learning styles. Notwithstanding, reading textbooks is a necessary (and required) method of study in most academic settings. There are several strategies for reading textbooks that can greatly improve your ability to retain and recall what you read in your textbook.

Audio-visual

The Learning Pyramid suggests that Audio-visual learning methods only lead to a 20% retention of information learned. The audio-visual learning method may incorporate various audio-visual learning/teaching tools including videos, sound, pictures, and graphs. However, as media and computer technology continues to evolve, new forms of audio-visual instruction are leading to more effective learning and retention of material. The effectiveness of audio-visual learning and study methods are enhanced when combined with other, more active forms of study.

Demonstration

Demonstration usually involves the teacher or professor providing students a learning task that they can observe. Within the structure of the Learning Pyramid, Demonstration is the first of the seven study methods that involves active learning. Demonstration tends to offer students less ambiguity than passive study methods and leads to fewer misconceptions and greater understanding. Demonstration can be an effective study method, especially when information is ambiguous or confusing.

Discussion

Discussion, or "Group Discussion", is a form of Cooperative Learning. It is also an active study method that can lead to greater retention of information and material studied, and higher academic achievement. Unlike competitive and individualistic approaches to learning and studying, Discussion is a cooperative learning method that relies on students interacting and studying material with other students and instructors. Discussion Groups are intended to stimulate student thinking, and increase participation and engagement. Discussion can occur within a classroom setting or by forming a study group.

Practice (by) doing

Practice by doing, a form of "Discover Learning", is one of the most effective methods of learning and study. This method of study encourages students to take what they learn and put it into practice - whereby promoting deeper understanding and moving information from short-term to long-term memory. Practice by doing makes material more personal, and thus more meaningful to students. Practice by doing also leads to more in-depth understanding of material, greater retention and better recall.

Teach others

The key to subject mastery is teaching it to others. If you're able to accurately and correctly teach a subject to others, you'll have a very good mastery of the concepts, and superior retention and recall. According to the Learning Pyramid model, students are able to retain abou 90% of what they're able to teach to others. The most common form of teaching others is Peer Tutoring. However, the best place to teach others is in a study group. One of the main activities that should occur in an effective study group is peer to peer teaching, where each group member takes the opportunity to teach the other group members the course material being studied.

Conclusions

The effectiveness of any learning method, as presented in the Learning Pyramid, will also be influenced by your own unique learning style. Some students retain and recall information best through visual (spacial) learning, while others are aural (auditory) learners. To maximize the effectiveness of your studying, discover your learning style.

Also, remember that the key here is to vary your method of learning. Don't assume just because the Learning Pyramid suggests that Lectures are the least effective study method for retaining information, that lectures aren't important. Lectures are still very important. Each of the learning methods presented in the Learning Pyramid are important. Even if it's difficult for you to remember everything that is taught during lectures, the notes you take during lecture may be vital to your ability to participate in a discussion of the material later on in your group, or teach the material to others. Vary your study method and focus on the methods and learning styles that yield the best results for you.

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Explore varying styles and methods for learning through the Learning Pyramid.

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Dr. Pedro Noguera is a former classroom teacher who is now a sociologist, researcher and sought-after expert on educational equity. He is the Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and Faculty Director for the Center for the Transformation of Schools at UCLA. The Holdsworth Center invited Pedro to work with Leaders in our District Leadership Program and share some of his insights and teachings on our blog.
Think about your family.

When one child is sick, do you give that child more attention? When one child is a rule-follower and the other a free spirit, do you parent them the same? For most of us, giving our kids what they need when they need it means we don't always treat them the same.

That's true in schools too. Anyone who works in public schools knows that students arrive with different needs. Some have experienced trauma, others are learning English for the first time, and others may be reading below grade level. It follows that our students will need different things in order to thrive and meet their full potential. Addressing the needs of all students is not easy but that is the goal of equity in education: to treat our students the way we would want our own children to be treated.

This is the true meaning of equity - acknowledging students' differences and giving them what they need to be successful. It also means staying focused on outcomes, both academic and developmental.

We'll know we are doing equity work right when kids' backgrounds no longer predict their outcomes.

Equity, not equality

This graphic below tells us much about the state of education today. In our current reality, privileged students not only come into school with an edge that comes from parental resources, they also generally have greater access to advanced coursework, effective teachers, private tutors and other opportunities that lead to stronger outcomes.

If we declare that all students regardless of background should have access to the exact same opportunities, that's equality. But as shown in the graphic, it can be difficult to access opportunities when you're so far behind you can't even see the playing field, or when there is no effort to compensate for the disadvantages that children bring with them to school.

Equity is a commitment to giving every student what he or she needs to peer over the fence so that they can participate fully in the opportunities that education can make possible. The focus of equity work must be to remove the barriers that limit success for all children.

A commitment to equity should not result in lowering standards or choosing to serve one group of students over another (affluent or underprivileged). To do so only prevents kids from being able to achieve excellence. Nor should it be interpreted as a concern that is only relevant to schools serving high numbers of poor children and children of color. There are plenty of equity issues in schools serving affluent children - after all, not all are high achievers - but often, these issues are ignored.

When schools and systems are focused on equity in opportunities and excellence in results for all, all children can benefit.

As I travel across the country working with educators, I find that most wholeheartedly endorse the concept of equity. But many don't fully grasp how their school system's practices and their own hidden biases and behaviors may be creating barriers to success for disadvantaged students.

For example, many schools place the most inexperienced teachers and principals in the toughest jobs, and then wonder why no progress is achieved. Other schools place high value on grades but overlook the fact that learning always involves making mistakes, and if we aren't focused on tangible evidence that students are learning, many students pass through school without the necessary academic foundation that will prepare them for college or careers. Many of our traditional educational practices - tracking, labelling, disciplining through exclusion - do not serve our students well, and result in schools doing little more than perpetuating existing inequities. We're stuck inside an outdated paradigm, one that limits our ability to use education as a means to break the cycle of poverty by transforming children into self-motivated learners.

For this reason, we must be willing to ask ourselves: "Is the way we have organized our schools helping our students?" If the data suggests not, then we must be willing to critically reflect on our practices and learn from educators who get better results by doing things differently.

We are overdue for a paradigm shift, one that puts a drive for excellence through equity at the center of American education. Some schools and districts have already done this. We can and must learn from them.

It's up to all of us to push for change - parents, policymakers, community leaders and educators. But educators have a special responsibility. The good news is that we don't have to wait for permission from the policy makers, or for every parent or teacher to get on board. We can change the way schools operate now.

Creating conditions for teaching and learning in the garden of education

I love to garden, and gardening serves as a good metaphor for how we should think about creating conditions in our schools that foster equity and promote learning for all children. If I want to grow big, beautiful cantaloupes, I know that the key is getting the conditions just right. They need sunlight, fertile soil and the right balance of water. If the cantaloupes don't grow, I don't blame the cantaloupes.

Gardeners - like schools - cannot control everything. Weather and pestilence may undermine my melon harvest. Likewise, schools cannot undo a child's trauma or provide him or her with a stable home life.

But educators do have the power to create the conditions that will make it more likely for that child to feel supported so that she can learn and thrive. By focusing upon conditions they can control, educators are more likely to make a difference.

The first step in this work is a hard look in the mirror. Too often, educators who claim to prioritize equity are unwilling to address the barriers that hamper learning for disadvantaged kids.

Dr. Pedro Noguera is the Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and Faculty Director for the Center for the Transformation of Schools at UCLA.

For example, they may serve students who lack essential skills to access the curriculum and who are consistently underperforming in relation to their more privileged peers. Unless they are willing to change and improve the conditions by providing adequate support and guidance to teachers, and sufficient remedial support to students in need (there's nothing wrong with remediating if there is concrete evidence that students are being helped), their students, like the cantaloupes, will not thrive. We must be clear- poverty is not a learning disability, and while we cannot ignore the basic needs of children for food, safety and emotional support, we must recognize that when there are persistent gaps in achievement it is usually a sign that the school is not meeting their needs.

Discipline patterns often reveal where conditions within our schools need to be changed. Many schools find themselves disciplining (often through suspension) the same students repeatedly. Often, these are the kids with the greatest academic, social and emotional needs. The problem is that we generally respond to the behavior, but we don't address the needs that are driving the behavior. When we approach discipline with a commitment to equity, we attempt to get to the root of the behavior problem, and then devise strategies to address it while simultaneously making sure that students learn from their mistakes (there should always be meaningful consequences for bad behavior), and that we keep kids connected to learning. After all, the hardest students to discipline are the ones who've given up and who no longer want to be in school.

Similarly, when we see high attrition among teachers and turnover in leadership, it is often a sign that the culture of a school must be transformed. No one wants to work in a dysfunctional system. Changing school culture is difficult and never quick because it requires the development of a shared vision and commitment to a plan with measurable goals that can be used to hold people accountable for doing things differently.

School culture, like the soil in your garden, is the medium in which teaching and learning occurs. Unless school culture can be changed so that it is student centered, promotes collaboration among professional educators and lifts their morale, it is unlikely that achievement outcomes will improve.

In schools where you hear educators blaming the kids or their parents for poor achievement, or when it is evident that the educators assume that the families they serve don't value education, you can be sure the district or school will not make progress. Until they accept responsibility for the things they do control - the conditions within their school - nothing will change.

Transforming schools and districts

Once educators have made an honest assessment of how they are serving different groups of students, the next step is asking critical questions: "What are we teaching, how are we teaching it, and how do we know students are actually learning? What resources do we have now that we can use more effectively? What do our students need to be able to do to be successful in the classroom and beyond?"

On the last question, educators often come back with the answer du jour - critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. However, when they engage in honest reflection on the instructional practices being used in their classrooms and carefully examine student academic work, they may realize they are falling short.

Teachers must be provided guidance on how to engage their students so that students can take ownership over their own learning. A first step is learning about who our students are, taking an interest in their lives outside of school, learning about the challenges they face, how they learn and what their hopes and dreams are.

Learning about our students requires work and commitment. Stereotypes and assumptions about children or the communities where they live often get in the way. It requires a willingness to build relationships with students that are rooted in trust so that we can see each individual's unique learning needs. It also pushes educators to go beyond the typical way we plan for student learning because it compels us to think about how to adapt our goals to their needs.

The good news is that there are models we can learn from. There are other schools and systems that have taken on the challenge of serving all students equitably and have achieved some pretty stunning outcomes, both academic and developmental. When educators get serious about meeting the needs of all students, it raises the level of learning for everyone.

Many of those success stories are included in my 2015 book, Excellence through Equity, co-authored with Alan Blankstein.

1. Developing a coherent approach to delivering instruction. Teachers must be clear on how to deliver high-quality instruction to students. They must collaborate in professional learning communities to plan together, analyze student work and figure out how to intervene effectively when kids are not learning.

2. Ongoing development of professional capacity of faculty. In many schools, the skills of the educators are not matched to the needs of students. Educational leaders must ensure that teachers are given the opportunity to build those skills. They must recognize that professional development must be tailored to the needs of individual teachers, and that pressure and scrutiny will not produce the changes needed.

3. Strong parent-community-school ties. Parents influence student achievement and if you don't include them, you're missing out on a critical piece of improving outcomes. Most teachers get no training on how to build partnerships rooted in trust and respect with parents, especially when they are from different backgrounds with respect to race, language, culture or class. Students do best when learning is reinforced at home. That's most likely when parents see teachers as partners.

4. A student-centered learning environment. The school's culture must bolster the morale of staff, reinforce core values (honesty, empathy, respect, etc.), and establish norms and rituals that reinforce the mission of teaching and learning.

5. Shared leadership to drive change. While having a courageous leader may be the most important ingredient for success, principals can't do it all by themselves. Leadership without buy-in and a shared vision goes nowhere. It's not simply about being a cheerleader, or a tough leader who demands change. It is about engaging your staff in a deliberative process where the concerns of staff are heard and they are they are treated as essential to any solution.

Sustainable school transformation must grow from the root of a common vision between leadership and the staff. Everyone must be willing to ask, "Where are we going, and how are we going to get there?" The "how" must be rooted in data - schools have to know what needs to change in order to get different results.

In my workshops with educators, I often utilize the five key ingredients to school improvement, as a way to guide our thinking about where change is needed. These are:

At the district level, the most important value for leaders is humility. They should be advocating for equity from the top and modeling the belief that all students can succeed.

They must also recognize that the most important work in the district is not happening in central office; it's happening in classrooms and in the schools. Instead of issuing mandates and applying scrutiny, they should be out visiting schools, winning trust and engaging in collaborative problem solving with staff.

We want principals to open up and share their struggles and difficulties. The stance of central office administrators should be: "How can we help? How can we solve this problem together?"

When there's trust, much is possible. Trust must be rooted in a plan and supported by evidence. But school leaders need to know that the folks at central office have their back and are supporting them, not simply judging them.

While many central office leaders agree with this concept in principle, unless there is open communication with school leaders they may not be able to identify their blind spots, or the ways they can improve support for the schools they serve.

At the end of the day, leaders who stay focused on the big picture can see where the district is making progress - and where it's not - and remove barriers getting in the way of serving students.
It's Being Done: Academic Success in Unexpected Schools
If you'd like to dig deeper into equity, I recommend the following resources:
How it's Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools
Books:

Karin Chenoweth and Kati Haycock
Education Trust The Marshall Memo
By Karin Chenoweth and Pedro Noguera

Newsletters:

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Equity isn't just a slogan - Dr. Pedro Noguera | The Holdsworth Center

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Dr. Pedro Noguera is a former classroom teacher who is now a sociologist, researcher and sought-after expert on educational equity. He is the Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and Faculty Director for the Center for the Transformation of Schools at UCLA.

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The link between curiosity and student achievement.

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Researchers know that certain factors give children a leg up when it comes to school performance. Family income, access to early childhood programs and home environment rank high on the list.

Now, researchers are looking at another potentially advantageous element: curiosity.

The more curious the child, the more likely he or she may be to perform better in school -- regardless of economic background -- suggests a new study published in Pediatric Research.

Researchers at University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and the Center for Human Growth and Development analyzed data from 6,200 kindergartners from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort. The cohort is a nationally representative, population-based study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education that has followed thousands of children since birth in 2001.

The U-M team measured curiosity based on a behavioral questionnaire from parents and assessed reading and math achievement among kindergartners.

The most surprising association offered new insight: Children with lower socioeconomic status generally have lower achievement than peers, but those who were characterized as curious performed similarly on math and reading assessments as children from higher income families.

"Our results suggest that while higher curiosity is associated with higher academic achievement in all children, the association of curiosity with academic achievement is greater in children with low socioeconomic status," says lead researcher Prachi Shah, M.D., a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Mott and an assistant research scientist at U-M's Center for Human Growth and Development.

The findings present an opportunity for families, educators and policymakers.

"Curiosity is characterized by the joy of discovery and the desire for exploration and is characterized by the motivation to seek answers to the unknown," Shah says. "Promoting curiosity in children, especially those from environments of economic disadvantage may be an important, underrecognized way to address the achievement gap."

Cultivating curious kids

When it comes to nurturing curiosity, the quality of the early environment matters.

Children who grow up in financially secure conditions tend to have greater access to resources to encourage reading and math academic achievement, whereas those from poorer communities are more likely to be raised in less stimulating environments, Shah notes. In less-stimulating situations, the drive for academic achievement is related to a child's motivation to learn, or curiosity, she explains.

Parents of children enrolled in the longitudinal study were interviewed during home visits; the children were assessed when they were nine months and two years old, and again when they entered preschool and kindergarten. Reading levels, math skills and behavior were measured in these children when they reached kindergarten in 2006 and 2007.

U-M researchers factored in another important known contributor to academic achievement known as "effortful control," or the ability to stay focused in class. They found that even independent of those skills, children who were identified as curious fared well in math and reading.

"These findings suggest that even if a child manifests low effortful control, they can still have more optimal academic achievement, if they have high curiosity" Shah says. "Currently, most classroom interventions have focused on the cultivation of early effortful control and a child's self-regulatory capacities, but our results suggest that an alternate message, focused on the importance of curiosity, should also be considered."

Shah notes that fostering early academic achievement in young children has been a longstanding goal for pediatricians and policymakers, with a growing awareness of the role social-emotional skills in school readiness.

And while more study is needed, similar efforts to boost curiosity could one day follow.

"While our results suggest that the promotion of curiosity may be a valuable intervention target to foster early academic achievement, with particular advantage for children in poverty, further research is needed to help us better understand how to develop interventions to cultivate curiosity in young children.

"Promoting curiosity is a foundation for early learning that we should be emphasizing more when we look at academic achievement."

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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Study explores link between curiosity and school achievement

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Researchers know that certain factors give children a leg up when it comes to school performance. Family income, access to early childhood programs and home environment rank high on the list. Now, researchers are looking at another potentially advantageous element: curiosity.

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By Brian Soika

April 22, 2021

In an event streamed live for EDTECH WEEK, USC Rossier Dean Pedro Noguera interviewed US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

The conversation spanned a variety of topics related to how schools can leverage funds from the American Rescue Plan to support students and families impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and highlighted some of his priorities as the nation's top educational leader.

Here are some key takeaways from Cardona's comments:

1. Recovery Requires Bold Action

Cardona acknowledged that the pandemic has exacerbated inequities in education. Low-income schools and students of color have been disproportionately affected by school closures and remote learning.

Going forward, leaders should think big when it comes to addressing the needs of marginalized students, rather than taking incremental steps. "If you're not leading with the unapologetic belief that all children can succeed at high levels, you're in the wrong profession," he noted.

2. Equity Should Be Integral to School Policy

Too often, schools address issues of equity through small gestures (e.g., having an assembly or assigning a book by a Black author). "Equity's not a thing you do, it's a mindset," said Cardona. Equity needs to be embraced at the leadership level and incorporated into policies and practices.

3. Internet Access for Students Is Essential

Low-income households and students of color who lack reliable Internet have particularly struggled throughout the pandemic. To address the problem, The American Rescue Plan provides funding to improve online access for students and their families, noted Cardona.

Access will only become more vital going forward. After exploring the potential of technology over the past year, some schools are considering how else they might use it to enhance instruction.

4. Civic Education Has Renewed Importance

The US Education Secretary suggested that the nation's education system should focus on becoming more well-rounded. In addition to prioritizing the mental health needs of students and staff, schools might consider enhancing or expanding their civics curriculum.

Education can help resolve the country's deepening divisions, and civics may provide tools to help students navigate confusing or false information about politics and the role of government.

5. Community Colleges Are Key to Rebuilding the Economy

President Biden has pledged support for community colleges, and Cardona also expressed enthusiasm for their benefits. "Community colleges are going to be the backbone of economic growth in our country," he said.

His comments come amid plummeting enrollment in California, the country's largest community college system. To strengthen the pipeline between secondary and postsecondary schools, he suggested that the two education systems need to improve their coordination, and give younger students the opportunity to think of themselves as college students early on.

EDTECH WEEK

The interview was a leading event for EDTECH WEEK, an annual educational technology conference. This year the conference featured shark tank-style pitch sessions, as well as panels with leaders from technology, business and education. Several USC Rossier faculty members lead discussions.
Related content:
A New Vision for Schools (and Why Now Is the Time)

Community college reform is working, but there's much to do

Survey: Low-income families strained by distance learning

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Pedro Noguera Interviews Miguel Cardona | USC Rossier

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By Brian Soika April 22, 2021 In an event streamed live for EDTECH WEEK, USC Rossier Dean Pedro Noguera interviewed US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. The conversation spanned a variety of topics related to how schools can leverage funds from the American Rescue Plan to support students and families impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and highlighted some of his priorities as the nation's top educational leader.

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Children and young people at risk of disengagement from school

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Children and young people at risk of disengagement from school

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Research Article 2015

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by Pérsida Himmele and William Himmele

Train teachers to call only on students who raise their hands and to build on correct responses to maintain a brisk classroom pace. This would enhance the self-confidence of already proficient students and minimize class participation and engagement among those who enter with lower proficiency.

Kim Marshall, "A How-to Plan for Widening the Gap"

Think about the typical question-and-answer session in most classrooms. We call it "the beach ball scenario" because it reminds us of a scene in which a teacher is holding a beach ball. She tosses it to a student, who quickly catches the ball and tosses it back. She then tosses it to another student. The same scenario happens perhaps three or four times during what is poorly referred to as a "class discussion." Although the teacher asks three or four questions, only two or three eager students actually get an opportunity to demonstrate active cognitive engagement with the topic at hand (we say two or three because a couple of enthusiastic students usually answer more than one question). Often even seasoned teachers can relate to the problem of calling out a question and getting a response from only one or two students. They get little feedback from the others and don't get an accurate assessment of what the others have learned until it's too late. They remember the beach ball scenario because for many, they did it just yesterday. Let's face it: we can all get stuck in the beach ball scenario.

The problem with tossing the beach ball is that too many students sit, either passively or actively disengaged, giving no indication of what they are thinking or of what they have learned. They have effectively learned to fly beneath the radar. Do you remember doing the same thing? Was it a high school or an upper-elementary content class many moons ago? Did you actually even read the book? Well, we'll make no confessions here, for fear that high school diplomas can actually be revoked after issuance. But our point is this: unless you intentionally plan for and require students to demonstrate active participation and cognitive engagement with the topic that you are teaching, you have no way of knowing what students are learning until it's often too late to repair misunderstandings. With approximately six hours of actual instructional time per school day, what percentage of that time are students actively engaged and cognitively invested in what is being taught or learned in your classroom? What evidence do we as teachers have that students are actually cognitively in tune with us? And what wonderful and deep critical thinking are we missing out on by not requiring evidence of processing and content-based interactions by our students?

Research on Total Participation Techniques

If we were given the opportunity to choose just one tool that could dramatically improve teaching and learning, we would choose Total Participation Techniques as the quickest, simplest, most effective vehicle for doing so. Whether you're a student teacher, a novice teacher, or even a 30-year veteran, a total-participation mindset is essential for ensuring active participation and cognitive engagement by all of your learners, as well as for providing you with effective ongoing formative assessments. Total Participation Techniques (TPTs) are teaching techniques that allow for all students to demonstrate, at the same time, active participation and cognitive engagement in the topic being studied. Quite simply, we believe that if you infuse your teaching with TPTs, you'll be a stronger teacher and fewer students will fall through the cracks of our educational system. TPTs can make us all better teachers.

A study conducted in four North Texas schools, with 211 5th grade English language learners (ELLs), found that those who attended the two TPT-practicing schools outperformed those in the two non-TPT-practicing schools on standardized reading tests. Studies involving comparisons of ELLs are often subject to numerous variables that affect how data might appear. The biggest issue with studies involving ELLs is that of dissimilar proficiency levels of students in the schools being compared. However, when comparing monitored students who had been exited within two years, whose proficiency levels would likely be similar, the students in the TPT-practicing schools outperformed those in the non-TPT-practicing schools at the end of the year on standardized reading tests (de la Isla, 2015).

The importance of student engagement is not limited to K-12 classrooms. University professors Witkowski and Cornell (2015) used the TPT Cognitive Engagement Model (Himmele & Himmele, 2011) and quadrant analyses to investigate the effects of collaborative activities and TPTs on student engagement and learning for 95 students in two undergraduate literacy classes. The results prompted them to make revisions to their courses that supported an increase in the level of cognitive engagement on the part of all students. According to Witkowski and Cornell, "the TPT Cognitive Engagement Model and Quadrant Analysis helped us to dramatically change our methods of teaching" (p. 63). Self-reported student learning and motivation increased as a result of the integration of TPTs and collaborative approaches to teaching as well (Witkowski & Cornell, 2015). The TPT Cognitive Engagement Model will be further described in Chapter 2.

The more we observe excellent teachers teach, the more convinced we become that the common thread in their teaching is ensuring that students become actively, cognitively, and emotionally engaged in the content being taught. And although we are the first to admit that "there is nothing new under the sun" and that the idea behind TPTs is truly a simple concept, we too often see that the actual implementation of techniques that cognitively engage students is not the norm in many classrooms. This situation is true whether we visit urban schools, rural schools, or well-to-do suburban schools. We find over and over again, too many teachers continue to fall back into the same old pattern of "delivering" the content while allowing their students to fall into the pattern of delivering passive stares. Too much focus is often placed on the teacher as the distributor of knowledge. A TPT mindset can effectively take the focus off of teaching and place it on what, and to what extent, your students are learning.

Listening Objects

Unfortunately, as mentioned in the Introduction to this book, too much of today's teaching is characterized by a stand-and-deliver approach to presenting content, in which teachers simply stand at the front of the room and deliver the material to be learned. Paolo Freire (2000) describes students in this type of a scenario as "listening objects" (p. 71). Would you like to be a listening object? Think about it. Would it warm your heart to know that daily you pack your children's lunches and they eagerly race off to school, where they sit and become someone's listening objects? Education built around the notion of listening objects or stand-and-deliver teaching is not effective for young minds, and it doesn't work for adults either. At any age, people need to pause and process what they're learning. They need to chew on concepts, jot down their thoughts, compare understandings with peers, articulate their questions, and as reading specialist Keely Potter puts it, "celebrate the learning that is happening right now in my head."

Disengaging and Dropping Out

Every nine seconds, a student drops out of school (Lehr, Johnson, Bremer, Cosio, & Thompson, 2004). Although recent indicators point to progress within overall graduation rates, even the encouraging reports still indicate that a fifth of our students drop out (DePaoli et al., 2016; Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, 2012). The picture is bleakest for African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, whose dropout percentages are more than twice that of their white peers (Balfanz, Bridgeland, Moore, & Hornig Fox, 2010). Because much of our experience is with students in urban schools, we have a very real understanding that effective teaching can have a direct influence on a student's life choices.

For six years we both volunteered in California's Chino State Prisons (Bill in the men's, Pérsida in the women's). If you don't yet understand the effect that your teaching can have on students, consider volunteering in a prison. The experience will make you an instant believer in the power of your teaching. In prisons, illiteracy is rampant. Dropping out of high school is not the exception-it is the norm. In fact, three-quarters of state prison inmates are dropouts (Martin & Halperin, 2006). And academic self-confidence is close to nonexistent among prisoners. As soon as inmates discovered we were teachers, many would freely tell us about their academic inadequacies and failures. Many were quick to place the full extent of the blame on themselves.

The cost of school failure doesn't end with the incarcerated. Think about the toll incarceration takes on the children of inmates, including the vicious circle of incarceration. We have both met mothers and fathers whose daughters and sons were serving a prison sentence at the same time as the parents. What kinds of educational experiences did these men and women participate in? Did they become "listening objects"? Would a better education have made a difference?

Boredom and Engagement

The reasons for dropping out vary depending on the students, but among the top reasons-cited by the dropouts themselves-are boredom and the irrelevance of school (America's Promise Alliance, 2014; Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, 2006). For most dropouts, becoming listening objects didn't work. When high school students talked about the types of teaching they wanted, they "described their preferred instructional strategies as ones that were hands-on, and that contained opportunities for debate and discussion" (Certo, Cauley, Moxley, & Chafin, 2008, p. 32). In other words, they preferred engagement, or just the opposite of boredom. These same researchers found that one of the negative consequences of a heavy emphasis on broad curricular coverage aimed at meeting academic standards was that "the quality of instruction is less engaging to students" (p. 26). A 2015 Gallup poll, surveying close to a million students, found that 50 percent of 5th through 12th graders reported being "not engaged" or "actively disengaged" in school. The more students advanced in grade levels, the less likely they were to agree with the statement "In the last seven days, I have learned something interesting at school."

Several studies and high school reform initiatives cite student engagement as a key ingredient in helping students stay in school and be successful (ASCD, 2010; Bridgeland et al., 2006; Lehr et al., 2004; Ream & Rumberger, 2008; Voke, 2002). According to a student respondent in the 2009 High School Survey of Student Engagement, "I think that the teachers have a lot to do with how you feel about school. Some teachers do well in engaging you and others never engage anyone" (Yazzie-Mintz, 2010, p. 20). Though failure to engage students would certainly not be intentional, it may in large part be owed to the prevalence of lesson delivery methods based primarily on lecture. David Sousa (2006) reports 4 to 10 times more retention when students are involved in verbal and visual processing (audiovisual, demonstration, and discussion groups) than when they are exposed to verbal processing alone (lecture and reading). After 24 hours, average students retain an average of 5 percent of what was lectured, 10 percent of what was read, 50 percent of what was learned as a result of being involved in a discussion group, and 90 percent of what they immediately used or taught to others. Teaching others, and immediately using what is learned, results in 19 times the retention as what is learned in lecture format. However, Sousa also states that "despite the impressive amount of evidence about how little students retain from lecture, it continues to be the most prevalent method of teaching, especially in secondary and higher education" (p. 94).

Making a Difference

Why would we, as authors of a book dedicated to infusing your classrooms with fun, interactive, participatory, and cognitively engaging strategies, dwell on something as depressing as the dropout problem? We do so because we know that for some students, cognitively engaging experiences can literally mean the difference between life and death. In case you think we are exaggerating, think about how dropping out is connected to crime and incarceration. Moretti (2005) estimates, through his meta-analysis, that "a one-year increase in average years of schooling reduces murder and assault by almost 30%,?motor vehicle theft by 20%, arson by 13%,?and burglary and larceny by about 6%"?(p. 6). Bridgeland, DiIulio, and Morison (2006) calculate that a dropout is more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison as a person with at least a high school diploma. The less education that inmates have, the more likely they are to return to prison (Harlow, 2003).

We know that effective teaching makes a difference (Black, 2016; Tucker & Stronge, 2005). In fact, an analysis of student academic growth over time suggests that teacher effectiveness has a greater influence on student performance than race, socioeconomic status, or class size (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Sanders & Horn, 1998). The cumulative residual effects of ineffective teaching last for years, even after exposure to ineffective teaching has been followed by exposure to effective teaching (Jordan, Mendro, & Weerasinghe, 1997; Sanders & Rivers, 1996). In sum, the quality of education a child receives is highly dependent on the effectiveness of that child's teachers.

Whether you work in suburban or urban schools, teaching average performers, gifted high achievers and underachievers, children of immigrants, students with special needs, students who repeatedly experience school failure, or simply your average passive performer teetering between staying in and dropping out, your excellence in effective teaching could be the answer to parents' prayers and the vehicle by which they see their dreams for their son or daughter realized. One teacher can make such a difference.

Evidence of Active Participation

In 2014, a blog post by Alexis Wiggins, 15-year teaching veteran and daughter of the late education guru Grant Wiggins, went viral. It was picked up by several major news outlets, including Valerie Strauss's column in the Washington Post. Wiggins had spent two days shadowing two students before she took on a new role as a high school learning coach.

These were her key takeaways (Wiggins, in Strauss, 2014):

Key Takeaway #1: Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.

Key Takeaway #2: High school students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90 percent of their classes.

Key Takeaway #3: Students feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long. ("I lost count of how many times we were told to be quiet and pay attention.")

Wiggins's discoveries are so important to the process of becoming an effective teacher that we've made her blog post required reading for our student teacher candidates. It contains essential reminders that we all need to hear periodically that can help to place us in the shoes of our students.

The use of Total Participation Techniques provides teachers with evidence of active participation and cognitive engagement. They can have a direct effect on the reasons most students drop out or fail to meet their academic potential. For one thing, in a TPT-conducive classroom, students are not allowed to be passive and hide behind the others who are always raising their hands. All students are demonstrating that they are learning and interacting and-believe it or not-doing so while they're having a great time. You will notice that all the techniques we present require active processing at deep levels of thinking, and all but a few use interaction.

Manheim Central Middle School

Let's look at the socially tenuous and risk-conscious environment that is often present in a typical middle school classroom. According to Keely Potter, a reading specialist at Manheim Central Middle School in south-central Pennsylvania, "By the time many students hit middle school, disengagement has become a learned behavior-not for all, but for some, especially those that hold little social capital among their peers. Too many are either resistant to engagement, afraid to engage, or afraid to appear too engaged. So that's one of the most important things that we can try to undo as effective middle school teachers."

Keely and several other teachers at the middle school made it their priority to infuse TPTs into their daily curriculum. They graciously invited us into their classrooms and are the source of many of the examples we use throughout this book. The best teaching that we have observed involves teachers setting the stage for students to demonstrate cognitive engagement in activities that require time to process, to make connections, and to interact with peers as well as their teachers. We are convinced that the accountability and cognitive engagement that result from TPTs can make a difference between mediocrity and excellence in teaching-and between student failure and student success.

When asked about the role of Total Participation Techniques in teaching, 8th grade English teacher Matt Baker said, "I've completely bought into it." He went on to talk about how he arrived at this acceptance. And he shared his thoughts about his earlier eight years of teaching experience in a high school:

Student interaction was rare. The idea of kids sharing something with one another, and the idea of kids sitting next to one another, was a foreign concept. The mentality was, you can't ever let them work in groups because then one person does all the work and everybody gets a good grade, and it's not fair. Everybody was in rows; if they were sharing something, it meant they were cheating. But that type of teaching doesn't work. Kids need to talk to one another. They cannot sit in a classroom for a whole period and not process what they are learning with one another.

In contrast, Baker's classroom at Manheim Central Middle School was characterized by a consistent give-and-take among students, and among students and the teacher. Students were constantly stopping, pairing up, and then joining other pairs to form small groups in order to process meaningful and complex concepts being presented through articles and literary works that were relevant to their own lives. Even if students wanted to sleep in Baker's class, they wouldn't be able to. Once a brief reading or content presentation had ended, students were out of their seats demonstrating that they could connect these concepts to their lives and to the effect that these issues have on society. In Baker's classroom, standards were met under the cover of relevance. And students were anxious to share their own take on the issues presented.

Ease of Use

It is not difficult to cognitively engage students, and it doesn't take much work. Sixth grade teacher Meghan Babcock and reading specialist Keely Potter implemented a four-week TPT-infused unit using Kate DiCamillo's book The Tiger Rising (2001). According to Babcock,

Using TPTs, the students were right with us every step of the way. It wasn't a lot of work; it just streamlined my thinking. It put more structures in place. I did the same amount of planning; I just did it in a little bit of a different way ... even just taking the questions out of the curriculum [or standards] and doing your own little thing makes a huge difference.

According to two-year veteran Courtney Cislo, implementing TPTs is not dependent on the amount of experience a teacher has. All teachers can improve their teaching through TPT-infused lessons:

I think for teachers that have never taught before, these techniques are so valuable, because you come out of college thinking, "OK, I'm going to do this as my anticipatory set, and then I'll do this, and next I'll read that, and finally I'll close with this." It's all me, me, me, and I, I, I. But the point is not to get your own agenda across; the point is that the students learn. With these techniques, you can gauge, "Oh, they've got it and I can move on," or "I should move more quickly," or "Uh-oh, I need to go back and reteach." It's a critical element for any classroom no matter how much experience a teacher has.

Although implementing TPTs may require that you actively remind yourself to do so, if you stick to it, it becomes a way of thinking. Babcock found that "the more you deliberately implement them, the more they become an expectation." Fifth grade teacher Mike Pyle agrees: "I use them every day throughout every lesson. The more you use them, the more comfortable you become with using them." But he also points out that intentionality is required:

You really have to be intentional in the beginning of the year, because many students are used to traditional classrooms where they sit in rows. But for me, I have to have them in groups. They have to be sitting in clusters, because they do so much discussing of things back and forth, with face partners, shoulder buddies, and as a whole group as well. We do a lot of sharing. For example, in social studies, even when they are reading out of the text, I might have them read a section, and then they have to stop and relay what they learned to their teammates. This back-and-forth helps them remember what they learned.

TPTs work best in classrooms that practice this constant back-and-forth, from the text or teachers to students, from students to students, and from students to teachers. By definition, TPTs require active participation and cognitive engagement by everyone.

Additional Thoughts

Before we move on, we need to make a disclaimer. We are still developing in our own use of TPTs. In many instances we have discovered the importance of TPTs the hard way. And we still have days in our university classes when we simply talk too much. We've come to realize that when we are engaged and passionate about a topic, it's easy to get lost in our own talking-even when no one is listening. The wheels in our minds are turning, and the generation of ideas is refreshing (to us) as we talk and talk and talk, and everyone else is thinking about the many things on their to-do lists. One student is focusing on the phone call she just received, another on the laundry he forgot to take out of the washer three days ago, and yet another on life's important questions, like whether or not that mole on her arm is starting to look like her Aunt Martha. This is why we no longer rely on our own good judgment to inject TPTs in our lessons. We have realized that we need safeguards to ensure against getting lost in the talking. So we now write TPTs into our slides, and we type them into our lesson plan agendas in red so that we don't forget to stop talking. And you just may have to do the same thing in whatever way will help you remember to repeatedly pause for student processing, interaction, and the reciprocity that needs to take place between students and students, as well as between teachers and students. Appendix B contains reminder posters that you can display in your classroom with the goal of helping you remember to use TPTs as often as you can.

Deep cognitive engagement does not emerge from simply being talked at. "Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other" (Freire, 2000, p. 72). We have the ability to make this restless, impatient, continuing, and hopeful inquiry happen in our classrooms. But it will take a deliberate infusion of opportunities to process, reflect, question, and interact with each other. So this is what we aim to do in this text: to provide teachers with simple activities that make it difficult for students to think about the phone call, the laundry, or that mole. Instead, students will be too busy actively processing deep concepts in ways that require that they use higher-order thinking as they actively reflect on, analyze, and defend their judgments in meaningful interactions with their peers.

One student who participated in Potter and Babcock's TPT-infused unit offered this reflection: "I have family problems, and when I come here, it all seems perfect, and it goes away." This is our hope-that through the use of TPTs, students will become so actively engaged and so lost in the learning, they won't have time to be distracted by other things.

Reflection Questions

During your last lesson(s), how much responsibility for demonstrating cognitive engagement did you place on your students?

Which of your students would most benefit from your consistent use of TPTs?

How can implementing Total Participation Techniques make you a better teacher?

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by Pérsida Himmele and William Himmele Train teachers to call only on students who raise their hands and to build on correct responses to maintain a brisk classroom pace. This would enhance the self-confidence of already proficient students and minimize class participation and engagement among those who enter with lower proficiency.

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A conversation about Instructional Equity

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A conversation about Instructional Equity

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At Collaborative Classroom, we're dedicated to transforming the school experience, developing students, and empowering educators by deepening their teaching practices. Board member Zaretta Hammond is one of our best thought partners in this work, consistently pushing our thinking and challenging us to do better.

A national education consultant for the past 25 years and the author of the best-selling book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students, Ms. Hammond joined the Collaborative Classroom Board of Trustees in 2018. In February 2020, we had the privilege of discussing instructional equity-both the big picture and classroom practice-with Ms. Hammond. We're delighted to share excerpts from this rich, wide-ranging conversation with you.

Collaborative Classroom: Equity has become a prominent topic in conversations about education reform. The term equity itself is worth taking the time to unpack and define before entering into discussion, especially since people use it in a variety of ways, with subtle but important distinctions. How do you sort through the various components of the equity question?

Zaretta Hammond: There are a couple of important but separate things in this question. The first is the definition of equity, and the other is the "equity question."

People talk about equity as if it had just one dimension, in an either-or way: it's this, or it's that. In reality, equity is a multifaceted and complex issue. I like the National Equity Project 's definition of educational, or instructional, equity: reducing the predictability of who succeeds and who fails, interrupting reproductive practices that negatively impact students, and cultivating the gifts and talents of every student.

When people define equity as if it had only one dimension, it's akin to the parable of the six blind men describing an elephant. As each man describes the one part of the animal that he is touching-a tail, an ear, a trunk, a leg, and so on-each arrives at a significantly different description of what an elephant is. Each man is accurately describing the part he's touching, and yet each description on its own is incomplete and even misleading. To make progress in educational equity, we need leaders, teachers, and other stakeholders to understand the different aspects of equity and how, when put together, they create more equitable outcomes for children.

To make progress in educational equity, we need leaders, teachers, and other stakeholders to understand the different aspects of equity and how, when put together, they create more equitable outcomes for children.

Once we get clear on our definitions and different aspects of equity work, we have to figure out how we enter into conversations that prepare us to transform instruction. Too often, we reduce equity to "courageous conversations" about implicit bias. This path into equity has its limits because there's typically no pivot to instruction. That said, the adult community in a school should engage in this work to become aware of the messages rooted in deficit thinking about the capacity and motivation of diverse students and families. But this type of equity conversation by itself is insufficient in improving outcomes of diverse students.

Then there is the "equity question" related to instruction. That's where conversations about instructional equity and culturally responsive teaching will come in. This facet of equity work requires us to remember that we are trying to improve instruction for diverse students who have historically been marginalized.

Here the equity conversation has to re-focus on helping underperforming students of color, immigrant students, and poor students of any color build their skills and become powerful learners. Here is where things get a little tricky. Most educators will agree there are gaps, but many believe the root of the "problem" is motivating children of color or increasing engagement, when, in fact, our public school systems were designed from the beginning to under-develop these students' cognitive resources.

What I call "inequity by design" was historically the brick and mortar of our school systems. Even today, these design elements are hardwired into our public school systems, resistant to superficial changes. But we often don't look at those institutional elements as part of our equity inquiry and conversations. Instead, we keep thinking schools that once worked got broken at some point, and now we need to fix them.

The reality: These systems are doing exactly what they were designed to do from the beginning, which is to churn out inequitable outcomes that create racial stratification in terms of who is college- and career-ready. This is a hard truth that many people don't want to acknowledge when we start having the "equity conversation."

Let's take the case of literacy development. When it comes to literacy, the research has told us how learning to read happens: learning sound/spelling correspondence accurately, then building fluency while simultaneously engaging in word study and comprehension.

But across the nation, too many minority children are more than one grade level behind in their reading, and it isn't due to a lack of student "motivation." It isn't solely because there are no books in the home. There is a historical pattern of putting the least prepared teachers with neediest students. That's an extension of our country's history of "anti-literacy" laws that penalized those who taught people of color to read. "Separate, but equal" continued this practice de facto. Jonathan Kozol in Savage Inequalities documented the same patterns well into the 1990s. This is a critical element to bring into equity conversations.

What I have seen out in the field in my 25-plus years as an educator, a teacher educator, and coach is that once a school team agrees that equity is important, they are challenged to get clear on the best approach when it comes to instruction. They are confronted with a new dilemma: distinguishing between multicultural education, social justice education, and culturally responsive education so they understand how each approach will (or won't) get them to instructional equity and the closing of the achievement gap. The biggest problem is they treat these three as if they are interchangeable, do the same things for student learning, and have the same impact on student outcomes. But they are not interchangeable and not all will get you to educational equity. (See Figure 1: "Distinctions of Equity")

Let's first look at multicultural education. When people believe multiculturalism leads to equity, they're usually envisioning a chain reaction: exposure to diverse books will encourage and inspire students, and therefore they'll acquire more self-esteem, and that self-esteem will cause students to lean in and achieve.

Many people think, "If we have lots of multicultural books, that will create conditions for equity and learning." It's the belief that diverse, multicultural texts create some kind of motivation that gets diverse students to engage and pay attention to the instruction offered. Many think having a multicultural classroom library makes them culturally responsive educators.

It's magical thinking to believe that despite not knowing how long vowels work, when students see a brown face in a book, somehow that will be a catalyst, and students will begin reading with greater fluency and comprehension.

In general, educators, especially at the elementary level, don't interrupt this wishful thinking around multicultural books because it's easy and appealing, especially when grappling with institutional equity around reading practices feels too complex.

Other educators have come to understand that multicultural education has its limits when it comes to instruction. Instead they focus on social justice education. But the misunderstanding that some educators have is, "If I simply discuss issues of oppression, read books about civil rights, their leaders, and people who worked against oppression, then my students' cultural identity will be affirmed."

Here's a thought to consider: Second graders don't want to talk about oppression, and when we as educators make that our sole focus, we're doing students a disservice.

Instead we must build their background knowledge across a wide array of topics. To comprehend texts with critical literacy and critical consciousness, students must be equipped with that deep background knowledge. The social justice paradigm would have us only talking about issues of inequity, bias, or how we become non-racist.

But we know that's not enough; the tendency is for that to get reduced into diverse books about boycotts and basketball or injustice topics of the day. Many social justice educators push back on the teaching of phonics and word study as oppressive when in fact, those elements of reading development are liberatory.

Keep in mind that social justice and multicultural education are useful and necessary in the equity conversation, but they play supporting roles. On their own they are not sufficient for effectively promoting instructional equity.

I believe that culturally responsive teaching as Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings framed it is the heart of instructional equity. This instructional approach leverages the science of learning by exploiting (for good) the cultural schema-or funds of knowledge-students come in with to make learning "sticky." When we build instructional practices around opportunities to process information in ways that make learning sticky, then students become able to carry more of the cognitive load that leads to doing more rigorous work. We focus on the cognitive development of underserved students and teach them how to be literate, competent readers and writers.

This is the vital equity work: students must comprehend what they're reading, possess advanced decoding skills, have word wealth, and be able to command all of these literacy skills. Our social justice frame should prompt us to ask these questions: How are students code breakers, how are they text users, how are they text critics, and how are they meaning-makers? Our culturally responsive pedagogies arm us to build these dispositions and skills in our most vulnerable kids.

This is the vital equity work: students must comprehend what they're reading, possess advanced decoding skills, have word wealth, and be able to command all of these literacy skills. Our social justice frame should prompt us to ask these questions: How are students code breakers, how are they text users, how are they text critics, and how are they meaning-makers? Our culturally responsive pedagogies arm us to build these dispositions and skills in our most vulnerable kids.

Collaborative Classroom: We've been speaking about the equity big picture and clarifying what equity means. Let's change the focus: what does instructional equity look like in a classroom? And when instructional equity is absent from a classroom, what might we notice?

Zaretta Hammond: Instructional equity happens when the teacher is scaffolding learning to the point that the scaffold at some moment falls away, so that the student becomes independent. Unfortunately, what I often see instead is over-scaffolding and permanent instructional crutches. Students remain dependent learners; they never internalize cognitive routines and procedures. In contrast, an independent learner knows the mental operations that she needs to use.

Instructional equity happens when the teacher is scaffolding learning to the point that the scaffold at some moment falls away, so that the student becomes independent. Unfortunately, what I often see instead is over-scaffolding and permanent instructional crutches. Students remain dependent learners; they never internalize cognitive routines and procedures.

If white or affluent parents see their child is not doing the work, they won't wait for the school to address the issue. They will get a tutor until the student learns to advance his literacy skills and internalize the cognitive structures he needs. Meanwhile school-dependent students are being conditioned to rely on the teacher to carry the cognitive load since the teacher never allows the scaffolding to fall away.

Teachers have been trained to shepherd these dependent learners through those procedures: We're going to get in groups and decide who's going to be the summarizer; can you be the visualizer now? We've taught reading and literacy well before mosaic of thought.

Teachers and leaders must ask themselves what the reproductive practices of inequity are. Frequently, the use of strategies, best practices, and summarizing practice dispossess the students of actually becoming independent. When educators defend their methods by characterizing them as "best practices," that is not sufficient justification. A "best practice" is often simply a popular practice. Just because many people use it does not mean it's effective. We still have children in our schools who are not reading at grade level. When we call these practices "best," is the unspoken message that these children can't learn to read?

Collaborative Classroom: In your experience, where are we more likely to see teachers consistently coaching their students toward becoming independent learners? Do you think that in wealthier schools, on average, teachers tend to shift the cognitive load more onto students?

Zaretta Hammond: First, let's not forget about inequity by design. For more affluent populations, especially White communities, schools were designed to develop student capacity to "learn how to learn," which builds cognitive structures. These structures, like strong muscles, allow one to carry the weight of heavy thinking, comprehending and reading of complex text. So, yes: the expectation is that in wealthier schools, students learn the skills earlier on and get the practice necessary to carry that cognitive load.

This isn't the blueprint for most schools in lower income or rural communities, especially those with larger numbers of children of color and emergent English learners. We see just the opposite happening. There's a tendency to underestimate the intellectual capacity of diverse students and give them low-level tasks, while the teacher carries most of the cognitive load. In practice, this means that the teacher over-scaffolds the lesson, and the over-scaffolding becomes a crutch. The students may get through the lesson, but they haven't internalized the learning because of the over-scaffolding and the lack of productive struggle.

Having students carry more of the cognitive load and allowing the scaffolding to fall away over time is what stimulates brain growth, so that cognitively your brain says, 'Oh, I need to step up. I need to get stronger. I need to figure that out.'

We have to make the brain work. This is [psychologist Lev] Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development," commonly called the "ZPD." When is that brain going to work a little bit? It has to be the right amount of work. It can't be too much, or the brain just shuts down. This is the work of teachers: they must understand how to move students into their ZPD, and recognize that their students won't go into it spontaneously or willingly, and that's natural. They need to be coached (not coaxed), like an athlete. Without coaching and the right level of support, students can't get into the learning zone.

Instead, we postpone more challenging, interesting work until we believe they have mastered "the basics," which are often low level. All the emerging cognitive neuroscience tells us to do just the opposite: you have to "water up" instruction to get kids into the learning zone. Teachers must give students tasks during the day in which they have to stretch themselves, and it should feel a little cognitively confusing by design. Let's use military boot camp as an analogy. Boot camp prepares soldiers by making them go through grueling training, and that at the end of that eight weeks, they are like, oh, snap! I can do new things. I can do hard things. They've trained, they've been stretched, and they're now stronger.

Just as the science of fitness informs us that building our body's physical capacity occurs via stretching ourselves-which in turn triggers the body to grow stronger-the science of learning informs us of the same in building powerful reading brains: The more productive struggle, the more the brain grows.

Just as the science of fitness informs us that building our body's physical capacity occurs via stretching ourselves-which in turn triggers the body to grow stronger-the science of learning informs us of the same in building powerful reading brains: The more productive struggle, the more the brain grows.

How are we reversing the systemic underdevelopment of these students? Reversing is taking students from being dependent learners who rely on over-scaffolding and helping them become independent learners. How do students become code breakers, text users, text critics? How do they engage in critical literacy? How do they think about text? Are students asking, Who is writing this text? What's the author's point of view? Do I believe him as a reliable narrator? What is he trying to say to me? Or, if it's nonfiction, are they asking, What has been left out of this? Whose story is this? Students need that ability. That is ultimately where we want them, but we know those areas have to be cultivated. Then by the time they get to fourth, fifth, ideally sixth grade, we can just focus on deepening those abilities.

Collaborative Classroom: You've mentioned teachers needing to "water up" offerings and instruction to give students work that makes them stretch. What do you think of the current trend of providing material at grade level or higher?

Zaretta Hammond: Let's put this into historical context. Districts have gotten dinged during No Child Left Behind for not providing access to high-quality materials at grade level. So, in many ways we have over-corrected. Now the mandate is to provide only grade-level text, even if students are well below grade level. It's an equity issue. The solution is not simply to provide all text at grade level.

Grade-level texts need to be accompanied by focused instruction using responsive pedagogies that focus on advanced decoding, building word wealth, and deepening background knowledge. Why? In face of such mandates, we have a tendency to fall back on over-scaffolding so students get through the text with a bunch of workarounds-like just asking them to summarize or visualize as simple comprehension strategies when their fluency is low and decoding slow. Under those conditions, these once-helpful strategies become negative reproductive practices leading to inequity.

Here's the reality: These teacher workarounds can't go with the child to the next class or into a testing situation. That's why teachers need to "water up" instruction to give students the deliberate practice to strengthen their skills before they have to work through texts in a unit.

As educators we must ask ourselves: Are the children in our care coming through our programs reading at grade level? Are they feeling competent and confident as readers and writers? This is our goal in defining equity so that it's more than a buzz word.
***
We hope you enjoyed this excerpt from our interview with Collaborative Classroom Board of Trustees member Zaretta Hammond. We also invite you to watch the recording of our recent Facebook Live conversation with Ms. Hammond.

Zaretta Hammond is a national education consultant and author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. She joined the Collaborative Classroom Board of Trustees in November of 2018.
She holds a Master's in Secondary English Education, with a concentration in Writing Instruction, from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a former high school and community college expository writing instructor. Ms. Hammond has also served as an adjunct instructor at St. Mary's College School of Education in Moraga, California, where she taught The Foundations of Adolescent Literacy. As a consultant, she has advised and provided professional development to school districts and non-profit organizations across the country around issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching for the past 25 years.

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A Conversation About Instructional Equity with Zaretta Hammond | Center for the Collaborative Classroom

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At Collaborative Classroom, we're dedicated to transforming the school experience, developing students, and empowering educators by deepening their teaching practices. Board member Zaretta Hammond is one of our best thought partners in this work, consistently pushing our thinking and challenging us to do better.

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We expect teachers to handle a lot: create engaging learning experiences, differentiate instruction based on student needs, manage behavior, motivate students to learn, and tackle persistent gaps and inequities. More and more, teachers are meeting this challenge by embracing social-emotional learning (SEL), which can support academic learning, teach and reinforce positive behavior, motivate students to be successful, and even support a more equitable classroom.

SEL programs are more likely to be successful with all students when they are grounded in strategies that promote equity. Equity means 'leveling the playing field' and creating a culture where all students feel fully included, respected, represented, and valued. In an equitable classroom, students have the tools and supports they need to be successful no matter where they start. SEL can support equity by making children feel safe, strengthening their relationships with peers and teachers, and helping children manage and express their emotions. SEL programs build upon individual student strengths to ensure that they can access and benefit from high quality educational opportunities.

Teachers need concrete, evidence-based strategies for bringing an equity lens to SEL.

How can teachers start to build equity into SEL efforts and use SEL to support equity? Here are a few strategies that start in the classroom.

Download the Classroom Strategies: Build Equity into SEL Efforts Infographic.

Learn about families. Talk with or collect surveys from families. Ask about family composition, language, values, traditions, and concerns to help you understand and connect with families and students on a more personal level and build on students' competencies.

Engage families in SEL. Engage families in understanding the purpose of SEL and how it supports academic learning. Involve families in generating SEL goals for their children so that they can help their children meet these goals outside of the classroom.

Affirm diverse backgrounds and traditions. Have students share and listen to others' experiences and values. This builds empathy and affirms the strengths of diversity in the classroom.

Use effective discipline practices. Reduce and prevent the use of exclusionary discipline in your classroom. Teach students skills that help them take responsibility for their actions and manage their behavior in alignment with your SEL program.

Don't forget your own social and emotional assets and needs. Educators can experience stress from supporting students' social and emotional needs, managing behavior, and navigating student trauma. Regularly reflect on how you can leverage your assets to support SEL in your classroom and seek guidance and support from peers as needs arise.

Additional resources on bringing equity into SEL

11 Ways Schools Can-and Should-Involve Families in SEL Programming. This article shares SEL practices that schools can use to engage families, and practices families can use to support SEL efforts at home.

Pursuing Social and Emotional Development Through a Racial Equity Lens. This brief describes ways equity and social, emotional, and academic development can be mutually reinforcing. It also provides considerations for examining issues of race directly in SEL programs. The authors offer productive strategies such as:
Building on student strengths, attending to root causes (such as discrimination, violence, homelessness, and hunger), addressing stereotype threat, respecting all cultures, providing needed resources, supporting adult social-emotional health, and engaging families and communities.

School Guides for Incorporating Equity into SEL programs

Applying an Equity Lens to Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. This issue brief describes some of the barriers that students face in developing social and emotional competencies and promising initiatives that apply an equity lens to SEL. Opportunities for eliminating barriers include:

School racial and socioeconomic integration initiatives

Restorative justice practices

Trauma-informed system interventions

Culturally competent and equity-literate educators

SEL and mindfulness programming to support students and teachers

Integrating a Focus on Equity into Social and Emotional Learning. This infographic summarizes some of the practices described in the issue brief above.

More on SEL

Topics: Classroom-based intervention Family engagement Social-emotional learning

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Want to build an equitable classroom? Start with social-emotional learning (SEL)

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We expect teachers to handle a lot: create engaging learning experiences, differentiate instruction based on student needs, manage behavior, motivate students to learn, and tackle persistent gaps and inequities. More and more, teachers are meeting this challenge by embracing social-emotional learning (SEL), which can support academic learning, teach and reinforce positive behavior, motivate students to be successful, and even support a more equitable classroom.

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But an innovative program in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is now exploring what could go differently before it goes wrong. Through a series of graduate-level courses, the Equity and Excellence in Education (EEE) program is helping school staff discover how educators can unconsciously contribute to uneven outcomes for children. The program offers a master's degree and certificate in equity through an unusual partnership with the district, the teachers' union, and a college.

Montgomery County's efforts come alongside a broader, nationwide push to address disparities in American education as diversity increases among public school students while teachers remain predominantly white. Rather than focusing solely on changing the demographics of their workforce-an effort that can take decades as staff retire and are replaced-the district's model centers on teaching current educators how to think differently. It's training that most have never received.

"In many teacher prep programs, you take one multicultural class. We are far beyond that one course," said Heather Yuhaniak, who helped create and now co-runs the program. "We don't just focus on the instructional piece. We focus on self-examination and how our racial and cultural backgrounds come with us into the classroom."

Context Counts

The EEE program started in 2011 as a way to bridge a growing achievement gap for students in an increasingly diverse district, which spans the high-income suburbs outside Washington, DC, and the immigrant-rich, economically challenged communities farther from the capital.

Fifty years ago, 94 percent of MCPS students were white, but today students of color predominate in the 159,000-student district: 30 percent of students are Latino, 29 percent white, 22 percent black, and 14 percent Asian, while MCPS teachers are 75 percent white, roughly mirroring national statistics.

The shifting demographics have had a real impact on teachers, who began reaching out to the local teachers' union, indicating that they felt unprepared to teach a diverse student body effectively. At the same time, the district started looking more carefully at its achievement gap-questioning whether teachers had the tools necessary to ensure that all students had an equal opportunity to achieve, according to Alana Murray, a vice principal who helped launch the program with Yuhaniak.

With support from McDaniel College in Western Maryland, MCPS developed a series of 12-week courses that discuss topics ranging from the myths and misconceptions around race in the U.S. to the influence of teacher perception on student identity and performance. To date, nearly 100 staff members-including teachers, administrators, and even a transportation supervisor-have completed the classes.

We don't just focus on the instructional piece. We focus on self-examination and how our racial and cultural backgrounds come with us into the classroom.

In a class on a recent Saturday, program participants discussed the incident of the boy and the Air Jordan and wondered if assumptions about race and class had played a role: "The teacher is taking an authoritarian stance," one commented. "Did he even ask the kid why he's holding onto it?" asked another.

EEE students kept coming back to the concept of framing: Is a problem that a teacher sees as stemming from a student's character or behavior sometimes really about the school's discipline policies, or about cultural differences between the way the teacher and student perceive the unfolding situation? If a teacher is able to be mindful of the complex dynamics at work, it can open up a whole new set of possible solutions.

Researchers say this shift in thinking can drive profound changes in school culture, re-establishing the trust between teacher and student that is a precondition of learning. In the end, the student with the shoe was not suspended, and his teacher spoke with an equity coach about how to avoid power struggles with students in the future.

Think Nationally

A big part of the EEE program is turning heightened awareness into action.

All participants are required to design action projects in which they identify an issue of equity in classrooms, schools, or the district and develop a research-based intervention to address it. Projects have included changing the tone of comments on math tests, creating a girls' after-school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) class, and developing a new method for assessing who gets sent to remedial reading classes.

After taking an EEE class on culturally reflective instruction, Randy Grove, a white middle school technology teacher, was motivated to substitute more culturally relevant images in a lesson he'd taught for years on forms of shelter.

"I realized that there was probably no house in that PowerPoint that most of my students could connect with," he explained.

While the EEE program may be unique, other communities are also looking for ways to address disparities in instruction and discipline tied to race, driven by a growing body of research.

Studies show white teachers have lower expectations that their black students will graduate and go to college, and that lower expectations for black and Latino students are one possible explanation for the achievement gap. Meanwhile, black students receive suspensions at nearly four times the rate for white students, while Latino students are twice as likely to be suspended as white ones.

As solutions, many school systems have banned suspensions for subjective categories such as defiance, instituted restorative justice programs, and begun to rethink teacher training. Denver Public Schools, for example, now requires teachers to participate in pre-service training in culturally responsive teaching, and Ball State University, in Indiana, has student-teachers partner with leaders in communities of color to develop an understanding of their students' backgrounds.

At the same time, districts and organizations such as the New York City Department of Education have made a push to hire more teachers of color, motivated by findings showing that students of color do better in school if they have a teacher of the same race.

According to Zaretta Hammond, an educator and author of the book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, these strategies represent important shifts for educators who can feel overwhelmed trying to make a dent in such a large, complex problem. There's a lot of work left to do, Hammond says, primarily around ensuring that all schools foster a culture of equity and all kids have access to high-quality teaching and learning.

"It's not just about recognizing your biases or increasing the number of teachers of color," said Hammond. "While these strategies are an important step, without putting changes in instruction at the core, we will never improve outcomes for kids."
Courtesy of Heather Yuhaniak
Hitting Close to Home

Within the EEE program, acknowledging one's own assumptions and seeing how they play out in the classroom has been equally powerful for white staff members and those of color. Often, these reflections have hit close to home.

Now I can provide research and specific strategies to help make sure they are not overly disciplining students of color or referring them to a school counselor because they couldn't have a positive relationship.

For Génesis Chávez, a first-grade teacher and master's student in the EEE program, the classes have made her reflect on feeling either "hyper-visible or invisible" to her teachers as a student.

Chávez is Latina and a first-generation college student who took ESL (English as a second language) classes at an elementary school in MCPS. When she read an article on deliberate "not learning" in one of her EEE classes, she recognized her own experiences as a child, and wondered how many of her students also refused to learn out of pride in the face of disrespect.

"I knew my teachers had a perception about me-I could feel it based on their demeanor toward me, versus my classmates," said Chávez, reflecting on the subtle cues that drove her response. "Some of them made no effort to engage me, while others were unkind and harsh. These experiences made me resent my teachers, so I would purposefully not do my assignments or leave them incomplete."

But Chávez and other EEE students now know that both perceptions and expectations can be reset with more awareness, and that small actions can have large impacts.

In the past, teachers often would send students, particularly those of color, to guidance counselor Tyosho Curtis's office for disciplinary issues that arose in their elementary school. The implication was that "I needed to 'fix that student,'" said Curtis, who is black.

After what she's learned in the program, Curtis says she's no longer "jumping in and being Superwoman." Instead, she's coaching teachers to come to her office for advice on how to work with their students on their own.

"Now I can provide research and specific strategies to help make sure they are not overly disciplining students of color or referring them to a school counselor because they couldn't have a positive relationship," Curtis said. "I don't know how I got through all my previous years without this knowledge."

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But an innovative program in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is now exploring what could go differently before it goes wrong. Through a series of graduate-level courses, the Equity and Excellence in Education (EEE) program is helping school staff discover how educators can unconsciously contribute to uneven outcomes for children.

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While in the early 1900s reading, writing and arithmetic rendered one literate, today, in the modern digital age, it takes information and media literacy - critical, problem-based thinking, teamwork, and technological savvy - in order for a person to be considered literate.

To be educated and successful, and to thrive in the digital economy, a student needs to possess the skills of the digital age. This is why it is crucial for a school and the educational system, to teach these skills along with imparting high-quality knowledge as well as a a proper value system.

What skills are required for success in the 21st century?

1. Digital-age literacy

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." - Alvin Toffler.

When it comes to information, the sheer quantity thereof stored in one's head, and the way it got there, are no longer all that important - what matters is what you do with it. This means that in order to become successful, students need to be able to analyse, access, manage, integrate, evaluate and create information in different media, which implies information and media literacy.

2. Communication

Communication is the basis of any successful cooperation, but it needs to be bi-lateral and with sufficient feedback. In this communications era of ours, which is called that way for a reason, the forms, the channels and the means of communication are ever more numerous.

It is therefore necessary that the possibilities regarding the expression and the creation of the content that will be exchanged in said communication processes follow the development of the means and are enriched in equal measure.

And this depends solely on the adoption of the knowledge and skills needed for expressing, writing, communicating; designing and sending the right message.

3. Cooperation

Unlike the dawn of capitalism, where individuality used to play the main role in social development and success of an individual, in modern society it has surrendered its leadership position to teamwork.

The governing principle is that only by working together, exchanging ideas and knowledge, and combining their abilities, people can achieve great results.

It is therefore very important to - from the earliest age, and especially through secondary school, which constitutes a preparation for full immersion into the the grown-ups' world - develop the skills of cooperation, establishing communication, healthy exchange of opinions and ideas, proper resolving of conflicts, and achieving a compromise.

4. Creativity

For creation, which is the highest level of learning, besides mastering other levels of knowledge, one, of course, needs to have a healthy dose of creativity. Creativity means discovering new connections, relations, and possibilities of matching already familiar elements, in order to create something new.

If we want to enable children to be successful, we must nourish and cherish their creativity; different ways of thinking and looking at the world and finding new approaches to problems and tasks.

We should by no means try to make them "fit the mould" and instil into them the same behavioural patterns. The role of the school is in this context of paramount importance.

5. Inventive thinking - intellectual capital

Before anything else, invention implies creativity, good ideas and curiosity, leading one to creation.

This means that not only should students have a well-developed imagination and critical-thinking skills, but they should also be able to assess the circumstances in which the idea in question occurred and the possibilities regarding its realisation, as well as possess the ability to adjust in the best possible way.

6. Problem-based thinking and problem solving

Problem-based thinking is considered the most complex of all intellectual functions. It starts from the assumption that knowledge is not adopted for the sake of mere learning and getting good grades, but that said knowledge needs to be "put to work", applied to solving concrete tasks, situations or problems.

And this, in turn, requires that the knowledge from different areas be connected and put into the service of finding a solution.

This is why teachers must transfer these very kinds of knowledge adoption models; teach them that the important thing is not which grade they are going to get, but how and where they can apply what they have learned: what they can create from their knowledge.

7. Value system and responsibility

Education never is, nor should it ever be, an independent process - it always goes hand in hand with upbringing. One of the most important functions of schools is "shaping" fine, well-mannered young people, whom it will help develop a proper value system and enable them to grow into persons of integrity.

Nowadays, in our complex technology-driven and networking-based age, a proper value system and ethical conduct have become more important than ever.

It is vital to instill good values into students so that they are able to use all the tools and technologies at their disposal whilst being aware of the responsibility that comes with using them.

8. Quality, top results and productivity

Studies have shown that good test results are unrelated to later productivity in life. Although schools do not insist much on productivity, it is directly related to good results, success, and progress in every sense.

In order for the students to achieve the level of quality required by the modern age, they must know how to use the possibilities and advantages of the digital tools and technologies at their disposal, as well as to properly prioritise, plan, and adopt new knowledge.

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8 skills a 21st century student should master at school - Student Hub Uganda

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While in the early 1900s reading, writing and arithmetic rendered one literate, today, in the modern digital age, it takes information and media literacy - critical, problem-based thinking, teamwork, and technological savvy - in order for a person to be considered literate.

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Take this test to learn more about your own bias and learn how bias is the foundation of stereotypes, prejudice and, ultimately, discrimination.

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P21's Frameworks for 21st Century Learning were developed with input from teachers, education experts, and business leaders to define and illustrate the skills and knowledge students need to succeed in work and life, as well as the support systems necessary for 21st century learning outcomes. They have been used by thousands of educators and hundreds of schools in the U.S. and abroad to put 21st century skills at the center of learning.

Battelle for Kids looks forward to engaging yet again with educators and other experts to update the Frameworks. We encourage personal use of these Frameworks by all who can benefit:

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