This week I was fortunate to “practice what I preach” and engage in responding to student thinking.  Whether it was moderating a piece of student evidence that was unfamiliar to me with a group of principals, or actually being in a classroom with the students and then deeply analyzing their work and their mindset towards math, I was reminded that this close attention to student thinking is what our work truly is about (not to mention it was fun, rewarding and empowering!).  Engaging in student work not only helped me to understand math in a deeper way, it also got me thinking…

1. As educators every one of us is changing the way that we think about how we educate; we are figuring out how to balance being responsive to the student thinking needs (and closing the gaps that we identify) and knowing that we have a curriculum to “uncover” with our students.

Recently, a very thoughtful (and growth mindset oriented) educator commented, with hesitation, that planning her instruction is truly changing.  She shared that she determines the end of the “unit” objectives or “essential understandings”, and then follows this up with day to day planning that responds to what she is observing in her classroom. Often, the big idea results from her assessment of where the student thinking is at. She was feeling concerned about this way of planning as she didn’t have a daybook done several days in advance.  As she spoke she mentioned the number of resources that she was taking home every night to research the most effective practices to provide for her students for the next day…in order to move them closer in their understanding of the essential question.  The question was whether or not the curriculum objectives would all be met this school year.  It is the ongoing tension that exits between meeting our learners where they are at and responding to those needs, and attempting to ensure that they are meeting the expectations of the curriculum documents.  We have all likely been guilty of wondering “what have these students been doing” in their past grades.

As I think about this challenge in the context of math, I wonder if it is because we are learning so much more about trajectories of learning in math.  We all understand (and are moving towards fully embedding this into practice) the need to conduct diagnostic assessments at the beginning of units, followed by numerous formative assessments throughout the unit as check ins…but how are we using this information?  We are beginning to recognize the misconceptions in the math, and we are filling our “toolbox” with research based practices that will help aid our students in developing understanding…will this learning help us to “save some time” and to thus have our students meet more grade appropriate curriculum expectations?

2. If this theory is correct, the need to ensure that every educator is engaged in learning about math in a deep and sustainable way is imperative – this begins with the collaborative analysis of evidence of student work.  To genuinely engage in this analysis, we need to move away from our ongoing “culture of niceness” (Earl and Katz, 2007) where we share our anecdotes of what occurred in the classroom, to an environment that is all about the evidence of student thinking through their work demonstrations. We need to give more attention as well to separating the person from the practice.  I often return to the research of Katz and colleagues as we are challenged to accept the discourse that happens in learning communities as a necessary type of professional conflict that “places thinking and practice under scrutiny in a way that builds and refines understanding.  Moderate professional conflict lies at the heart of collaborative inquiry…” (Building and Connecting Learning Communities, 2007, pg. 76).  I would offer that this culture is also an indicator of the growth mindset of participants.

3. As an educator and parent, the message about the need to embed literacy and numeracy learning into our daily lives has been supported for a number of years. I remember engaging in Esso Family Math as a principal, watching families play games and enjoy math together.  These conversations are critical to help students to develop vocabulary at early ages (yes, our K students can use vocabulary like “hypothesis”!), to see math everywhere in the world (yesterday we discovered that the shape of our garage is a pentagon!) and to generally develop an understanding that math is important.  I wonder what impact these conversations have on the development of a growth mindset in learners?

Moderating student thinking is truly an essential part of the development of our understanding of mathematics.  Each time I moderate I learn more about misconceptions, about the struggle that our students have with place value, and this week, about how vital it is that our students are given opportunities to develop their spatial sense (have you had a chance to read the Paying Attention to Spatial Reasoning? WOW! Are your students playing Mindcraft in their spare time?).  What was also confirmed for me is the need to continue to focus on explicitly teaching and supporting our students in representing their thinking on paper – which is going to be my next moderation work.

Is moderation part of your repertoire of Instructional Leadership work? What is it telling you?

Until next week…

Our SMART Goal:  By June 2015, ___%* of the learners (inclusive of all adults and students) in SGDSB will demonstrate growth in their efficacy towards learning as measured by surveys and exit cards**.  

*yet to be determined      **(summarized for this post)

As a district, we are working hard at figuring out how to move the adults and the students (all of whom are learners!) towards adopting a growth mindset. It seems that we have a pretty good understanding of what a growth mindset is (theoretically). We know that having a growth mindset is at the core of achieving our Learner Centered Environment, and we know that our Conditions for Learning are part of the HOW of achieving that learning mindset. The Assessment for Learning Strategies and Key Components (from Black and Wiliam, 1998) are the teaching and learning strategies that the Conditions for Learning are in service to.  Thus, while this work is complex, growth in any area will likely impact the others. Have a look at a this draft visual representation of our Board Learning Plan work.

Connections between Mindset, C4L, A4L

The following article also supports these connections:

Click to access GrowthMindset.pdf

Our SMART goal (above) is the result of the realization of our Conditions for Learning within an Assessment for Learning Culture in every learning environment – classroom, school, PLC, etc, in our district. Anyone who is teaching anything to anyone needs to embed our Conditions for Learning and the Assessment for Learning strategies and 5 Key elements – it is only this way that we will begin to see if our theory of action (below) is true.

If we foster learner centered environments and pedagogy, then learners will possess an increased sense of belonging and be motivated to learn.  

While this level of understanding is essential,  we need to dig deeply into how we create this growth mindset in every learner -in both the adults (think about your own mindset as a leader) and the students – as we strive to create and foster the learner centered culture in our district. We know that there is need to fully understand our own mindsets, as learners.  To do this, we need to engage in our own personal self-reflections against indicators of a growth mindset. For our student learners, there is a need to explicitly teach what it means to have a growth mindset, and to foster this type of thinking in our schools.  This is the practical work…and it is only the practical work that will lead us to full integration into who we are as learners.  We need to practice and model having a growth mindset in order to fully realize the impact and the potential of this way of being. As Will Smith says, “you have to believe it”! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkziAM_ZyDM )

Below are links to a couple of excellent resources that will help us (I was planning to write about the how, but honestly, these two documents capture the first steps nicely! )

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2012/10/response_classroom_strategies_to_foster_a_growth_mindset.html  (be sure to access some of the resources included in this blog as they lead you to tools that can be used in your work!)

http://whatkidscando.org/resources/pdf/Growth%20Mindset%20Activites%20&%20Assignments.PDF    Below are links to the videos that are mentioned in this document…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkziAM_ZyDM   Will Smith…awesome!!!

http://www.whatkidscando.org/featurestories/2012/12_just_listen/  (a series of videos from kids!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhxcFGuKOys why you need to fail…another awesome video especially for our junior, intermediate and senior students!

We are well on our way to creating a school district that is learner centered. There is a strong awareness of the need to foster this environment.  Our work this year is to move the theoretical into the practical; to embed our understanding of the learner centered environment into our daily practice – to make it automatic…or a way of being.

Thoughts?  Does the connection between the work make sense?  Until next week…

The Conditions for Learning were the result of the work that was done in response to challenges around student engagement and motivation; our data was telling us that student absenteeism was on the rise, assignments were not submitted, and overall, students seemed apathetic towards school.  We asked ourselves what conditions needed to be in place for true learning to actually happen.  We defined learning so that everyone was in the same place (again, I offer the definition from Katz and Dack that embodies “a permanent changing in thinking and behaviour”). We then began to look at all of the conditions we knew were necessary for real learning to take place; the environment as the third teacher, the relationship that exists between learners and the educator, the need to create environments where students were free to take risks (to understand that learning is a process where mistakes are key), the notion that learning is a social activity (so we dug into what genuine collaboration is …vs. cooperation), and the need to ensure that educators are responding to the learning needs of learners by both scaffolding learning and providing a suitable challenge (the Zone of Proximal Development).

The more that I engage with these Conditions for Learning however, the more convinced I am that these learning conditions are completely grounded in the notion that learning isn’t something that is done to the learner, it is done with the learner.

I believe that this statement, “doing with, not doing to” is the essence of our work. As educators, we are beginning to figure the new role out…to let go of the notion of controlling the curriculum and the learning, and to instead, provoke the learning.  This starts with knowing the learners – their interests, their age (this really matters as it directly impacts the approach that we take), and the context in which they live.  These factors all impact the provocations/essential questions that the educator provides to inspire the learning.

The pedagogy that is grounding the work of the Early Years is a perfect example of this type of approach.  We know that for our youngest learners, many of the conditions for learning are naturally in place; these learners take risks all the time, learning from and with each other (perhaps not always in a collaborative and cooperative way however this is where the educator comes in!), and trusting the educators.  Genuine wonder and inquiry is engaged in as a response to their questions; they see learning as exciting, they are intrinsically motivated, and they are eager to attend school.  I have seen classrooms where these 4 and 5 year olds have planned the physical arrangement of the furniture, are able to display their own creations, vacuum and sweep up… thus making the environment their own. Families are seen as partners in learning; they develop this sense of belonging and engagement in “school” during the many months of transition activities leading up to their child formally entering the school, and then they are invited into the classroom regularly to engage in the learning with the children, and to co-construct the record of learning that takes place during the Progress Report cycle.  These families see school as a partner in learning…not something that is being done “to” their child.

When and why do we move from “doing with” to “doing to” in our classrooms?  What impact is this having on the true learning that is happening? on the nature of parental engagement?  Will our Conditions for Learning, if fully implemented, help us to “do with”?

And finally…here’s a leap…but could we inadvertently be creating fixed mindset learners by “doing to”?

Until next week…