As I reflected on my blog from yesterday, I realized I should have kept going. This idea of being willing to learn from our mistakes is a concern for adults, too. I often interact with people who are not comfortable with the idea that they might mess something up. Even adults learn from mistakes, though! Just ask my family about the time when I tried to substitute Frosted Flakes for Corn Flakes when making baked chicken. Big Mistake! Lesson Learned!
It is heartbreaking for me when I hear teachers say that they are afraid to try something new or innovative because they don't want to mess it up. These are the same people that we desperately need to send the message to students that mistakes are good, that we need to take risks, and that we can only learn when we try something new and especially when we try something new that doesn't work the first time! It makes me think of the time when I had a teacher who took a risk and tried something new when I was observing her. The lesson did not go as she intended. The students were confused, she had to stop the lesson and pivot. She admitted to the students that her lesson did not go as she had hoped and that the next day they would need to re-visit the lesson. She was absolutely shocked when we had our post conference and I had marked her as excellent. I pointed out to her that she challenged herself to try something new, she recognized that she needed to make a change, she communicated with her students and made herself vulnerable, and she reflected on the lesson in order to make plans for the next day. Then, I said, "That is excellent teaching and your students are fortunate to have a teacher who is continuing to learn."
As leaders in the schools, it is our job to not only encourage our teachers to take risks and make mistakes, but insist on it. I was fortunate to have a principal many years ago who let my co-worker and I try something new with our students in their writing. We were not happy with the form writing that we were teaching in order to prepare students for the state assessment. Instead, we focused on getting thoughts on paper in any form, emphasizing creativity and descriptive writing with no emphasis on structured five paragraph essays. By the end of the year, our kids were producing beautiful writing and they loved to write. Unfortunately our test scores did not reflect the improvement at all, in fact the scores dropped. We took a risk and we learned that we needed to find a healthy balance in our writing instruction. Our principal responded with nothing but encouragement and praise for challenging ourselves to do what we felt was best for our kids. From that moment forward, I was never afraid to make a mistake in my classroom because I knew I had support and I knew that my students would benefit in the end.
Let's work together to encourage risk taking and celebrate the learning that occurs from making mistakes. Of course, it is okay to emphasize the fact that while mistakes is encouraged, it is a mistake to keep making the same mistake!
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Learn From Your Mistakes
"You learn from your mistakes." We have all heard it. In fact, as educators, we have probably all said it. I find it to be a very accurate statement and I would guess that many would agree with me. It is through the mistakes that we make that we learn new or better ways to do something. When we make a mistake, we have the opportunity to learn something new. The statement seems to ring true for the learning process. The problem is this: We don't live it!
In our schools today, we can find many anxiety riddled children who definitely don't believe that mistakes are a good thing. They honestly believe that they need to be perfect and that students who make mistakes are not "good" students. One might wonder- "How did this happen?" I can certainly point to a few practices that might have contributed to this phenomenon.
I will start with the practice of grading homework. Homework should be a time to practice, make mistakes, and learn from them. When a student receives a grade on their "practice", the message they are receiving is that their practice needs to be perfect if they want to receive a high grade. Students should be given the opportunity to make mistakes and learn how to perform a task or skill through multiple practice opportunities before they are subjected to a "grade". As a softball player, practice was a time when I could try new things with my swing or my throw, whereas it was during games when I was "graded" on my performance. I certainly would not take a risk on trying something new with my swing when I was in a game trying to score runs for my team. On the other hand, I would never have improved as a player if I did not have a chance to make adjustments during practice.
Another common practice in education that may be contributing to a misconception about the value of learning from mistakes is what I will call "hand holding" or "enabling". This leads to learned helplessness and it produce students who are not willing to engage themselves in challenges. What I am referencing here is the fact that teachers often provide students with very specific steps or directions to solve problems or complete tasks instead of providing open ended tasks to allow students to figure it out themselves. I am also referencing the tendency of teachers to step in and help students before they have had a chance to really struggle. While I understand teachers' desire for students to know exactly what to do and their concern about students getting frustrated, these behaviors do not encourage students to make mistakes and learn from them.
If we truly value mistakes and believe that children learn from them, we must allow students to re-do their work when it is not correct. This is their opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned from their mistakes. We also need to engage students in activities that are challenging enough to ensure that they will make mistakes, and then we need to celebrate the mistakes and highlight the learning occurs as a result.
In our schools today, we can find many anxiety riddled children who definitely don't believe that mistakes are a good thing. They honestly believe that they need to be perfect and that students who make mistakes are not "good" students. One might wonder- "How did this happen?" I can certainly point to a few practices that might have contributed to this phenomenon.
I will start with the practice of grading homework. Homework should be a time to practice, make mistakes, and learn from them. When a student receives a grade on their "practice", the message they are receiving is that their practice needs to be perfect if they want to receive a high grade. Students should be given the opportunity to make mistakes and learn how to perform a task or skill through multiple practice opportunities before they are subjected to a "grade". As a softball player, practice was a time when I could try new things with my swing or my throw, whereas it was during games when I was "graded" on my performance. I certainly would not take a risk on trying something new with my swing when I was in a game trying to score runs for my team. On the other hand, I would never have improved as a player if I did not have a chance to make adjustments during practice.
Another common practice in education that may be contributing to a misconception about the value of learning from mistakes is what I will call "hand holding" or "enabling". This leads to learned helplessness and it produce students who are not willing to engage themselves in challenges. What I am referencing here is the fact that teachers often provide students with very specific steps or directions to solve problems or complete tasks instead of providing open ended tasks to allow students to figure it out themselves. I am also referencing the tendency of teachers to step in and help students before they have had a chance to really struggle. While I understand teachers' desire for students to know exactly what to do and their concern about students getting frustrated, these behaviors do not encourage students to make mistakes and learn from them.
If we truly value mistakes and believe that children learn from them, we must allow students to re-do their work when it is not correct. This is their opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned from their mistakes. We also need to engage students in activities that are challenging enough to ensure that they will make mistakes, and then we need to celebrate the mistakes and highlight the learning occurs as a result.
Thursday, August 2, 2018
Why go solo?
I have spent a lot of time recently thinking about the importance of relationships, making connections, and collaborating. I have always valued team and the contributions of others. As an athlete, I learned at a very young age the importance of teamwork. I carried this with me into my career as an educator. As a teacher, I was extremely fortunate to have amazing colleagues who loved to collaborate and share. I absolutely believed that we could meet the needs of any student because, as a team, we had many talents and lots of experience and we combined them to support our students. As an administrator, I was also fortunate to be on a large team of administrators who had a wide variety of talents and experiences and they were willing to share and network.
I have recently made a move from the only district I really knew, as a student, as a teacher, as a parent, and as an administrator. As I have worked to learn about the 30 districts in my region, my eyes have been opened to the very wide array of school/district structures that exist in our area. Despite the fact that some districts are so small that they only have one administrator in the entire district, I still hear a common message of shared leadership and capacity building. It certainly looks different in a district of 100 students than it does in a district of 12,000, yet it is crucially important in both.
When you think about the work that educators do and the infinite number of challenges that are faced each and every day these educators, it is quite clear that NO ONE is equipped to have all of the answers. Yet, when you surround yourself by people who have different skill sets and experiences, you have a much greater chance of having access to all (or most) of the answers. One superintendent told me that his greatest leadership quality is the group of people who work with him. When leaders really understand that and value the people around them enough to ask for their help and their thoughts, they can't help but succeed.
As a leader, I have been guilty, in the past, of feeling like I need to know everything and that asking for help is a sign of weakness. The best gift I have given myself is the realization that, just because I am in a leadership role does not mean that I am anything more than one member of a team.
I have recently made a move from the only district I really knew, as a student, as a teacher, as a parent, and as an administrator. As I have worked to learn about the 30 districts in my region, my eyes have been opened to the very wide array of school/district structures that exist in our area. Despite the fact that some districts are so small that they only have one administrator in the entire district, I still hear a common message of shared leadership and capacity building. It certainly looks different in a district of 100 students than it does in a district of 12,000, yet it is crucially important in both.
When you think about the work that educators do and the infinite number of challenges that are faced each and every day these educators, it is quite clear that NO ONE is equipped to have all of the answers. Yet, when you surround yourself by people who have different skill sets and experiences, you have a much greater chance of having access to all (or most) of the answers. One superintendent told me that his greatest leadership quality is the group of people who work with him. When leaders really understand that and value the people around them enough to ask for their help and their thoughts, they can't help but succeed.
As a leader, I have been guilty, in the past, of feeling like I need to know everything and that asking for help is a sign of weakness. The best gift I have given myself is the realization that, just because I am in a leadership role does not mean that I am anything more than one member of a team.
Saturday, June 9, 2018
Change is hard
As I reflect on an outstanding #LearningFIRST conference this past week, I can't help but think about a question that has been challenging me for many years. Why is change in education so hard? Our world is constantly changing. Smartphones have revolutionized how we communicate, how we access information, how we organize our lives, etc... Stores, where you walk in and see and touch the items you want to buy, are an endangered species. We no longer have to travel and share a space with someone to have a "face to face" meeting. The me from the 1990's would hardly recognize this world that we live in. However, many of the practices that we engage in look the same or similar to those of the 1990's. Where is the disconnect?
I watched almost 400 educators smile, laugh, nod their heads, and cry as Lavonna Roth, Ken Williams, George Couros, and Tom Hierck talked about the things that we need to change in education. I 100% believe that every educator in that room WANTS to make those changes so that they can do what is best for the children they are entrusted to educate. As educators, we are driven to do this really hard work by a dedication to children that is strong and unwavering. We would NEVER do anything to intentionally hurt a child. However, we continually engage in practices that do hurt children and do hold some or all children back.
Why is this change so hard, and why is it taking so long? I have many theories, but one that stands out is the fact that for many of us, our career in education began when we were 4 or 5 and it has continued without interruption since that time. What we do as educators closely resembles what was done to us, and it is all that we know. In order to make big and impactful change in our classrooms and schools, we need a HUGE disruption that causes us to completely change the thinking of the masses and allows us to abandon, in full force, ancient teaching, grading, and assessing practices.
Unfortunately I do not yet know what this disruption will be or what it will look like. What I do know, however, is that the hard work that will be done to make the change MUST be done collaboratively. Educators have way too much on their plates to tackle ANYTHING alone. We can only do this work by tapping in to the talents and strengths of each of the individuals who are part of our team. According to John Hattie's extensive research, Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) has the largest influence on student achievement. This is definitely our starting point.
I watched almost 400 educators smile, laugh, nod their heads, and cry as Lavonna Roth, Ken Williams, George Couros, and Tom Hierck talked about the things that we need to change in education. I 100% believe that every educator in that room WANTS to make those changes so that they can do what is best for the children they are entrusted to educate. As educators, we are driven to do this really hard work by a dedication to children that is strong and unwavering. We would NEVER do anything to intentionally hurt a child. However, we continually engage in practices that do hurt children and do hold some or all children back.
Why is this change so hard, and why is it taking so long? I have many theories, but one that stands out is the fact that for many of us, our career in education began when we were 4 or 5 and it has continued without interruption since that time. What we do as educators closely resembles what was done to us, and it is all that we know. In order to make big and impactful change in our classrooms and schools, we need a HUGE disruption that causes us to completely change the thinking of the masses and allows us to abandon, in full force, ancient teaching, grading, and assessing practices.
Unfortunately I do not yet know what this disruption will be or what it will look like. What I do know, however, is that the hard work that will be done to make the change MUST be done collaboratively. Educators have way too much on their plates to tackle ANYTHING alone. We can only do this work by tapping in to the talents and strengths of each of the individuals who are part of our team. According to John Hattie's extensive research, Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) has the largest influence on student achievement. This is definitely our starting point.
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