Annual Conference

A Generation to Define a Century

"There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given.  Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."

Historian, economist, demographer, and author Neil Howe uses that 1936 quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt to sum up the expectations and potential of the kids who currently populate our classrooms. His ASCD Annual Conference General Session presentation offered perspectives on the educational implications of teaching a generation of students he calls “the Millennials.”

The first Millennials were born in 1982, he said, and graduated high school with the Class of 2000. “Remember “Baby On Board” stickers on minivans?” Howe asked. These are those babies, growing up now in a high-pressure world and thriving in ways that seem alien to their Baby Boomer and Generation X parents—and teachers.

“They don’t mind the pressure,” Howe said, “as long as they feel like they’re getting somewhere.” Educators can help Millennials by recognizing that these boys and girls have unique characteristics. Know them and you’ll know Millennials.

“Seven core traits mark this generation as different from Boomers and X-ers,” Howe said. “This generation is special, sheltered, confident, team oriented, conventional, pressured, and achieving. All of this has implications for school reform and school curriculum.”

Because Millennials consider themselves special, educators should:

• Encourage parental involvement. “Get the helicopter moms on your side,” Howe joked.
• Ask the public and media to support efforts to improve education. They want to.

Millennials are sheltered – they are used to being watched over, and expect it. That means educators should:

• Emphasize school safety and accountability.
• Take a fresh look at class and school sizes. Smaller will be perceived as better at providing “structured communities that let no one fall through the cracks,” Howe said.

Since Millennials are confident, they are “collectively optimistic about their economic prospects. The new idea is that every child is college ready, not just job-ready,” he noted. Educators should:

• Stress positive outcomes for everyone.
• Use contextual and project-based environments.
• Craft personal progress plans to guide students’ learning and growth.

Millennials’ are team orientation may be their most notable quality. “They like groups, they like applying their energy to community projects,” Howe said. “They use technology to plug into the group, through instant messaging and user groups and e-mail.” To tap that collective goodwill:

• Teach team skills.
• Build community service into the curriculum.
• Provide opportunities for students to help other students.

Millennials have relatively conventional hopes and dreams. “They define their life goals in terms of career, work-life balance, citizenship,” Howe said. “They plan ahead. And they trust big institutions in ways that Boomers haven’t.” For educators, this characteristic invites a back-to-basics approach:

• Create core curricula that every student is expected to master. “Make sure that every task is achievable with directed effort,” he said.
• Celebrate progress.
• Continuously monitor, assess, and redirect learning. “The best schools for Millennials instantly detect—day to day—the progress of every student,” Howe said.

Millennials are pressured. Structured activities fill most hours in their days, but they generally respond well to pressure. To take advantage of that skill while minimizing burn-out, educators can:

• “Stress long-term life planning and guarantees over short-term opportunities and risks,” Howe advised. Forget learning from mistakes; “Millennials don’t want to make any mistakes,” he said.
• Structure learning around goal mastery.
• Reverse engineer curricula, starting with where you want students to be at the end of the year. “A sense of destination is what Millennials want in their curriculum,” Howe said.

Millennials are achieving; they embrace educational challenge and want higher standards. Three-quarters say they want to attend four-year colleges. Acknowledging that penchant for high achievement, educators should:

• Build challenging curricula.
• Emphasize achievement over aptitude and effort.
• Incorporate cutting-edge computer technology into the curriculum.
• “Finally, encourage teachers to set an example themselves of professional achievement and lifelong learning,” Howe said.

“This generation is going to define the 21st Century much like the G.I. Generation defined the 20th Century,” Howe said, recalling the cohort that weathered the Great Depression and won World War II. “They are going to face many burdens as they grow older: geopolitical, environmental, fiscal, economic. When you look at this generation—protected, team-playing, confident, collectively optimistic—you see some of the traits that we saw in their grandparents.”

ASCD’s Whole Child Commitment: Reframing Education

ASCD is starting to shift the dialogue from schooling to learning—and in doing so, reframing the definition of education, observed ASCD Executive Director Gene Carter during Sunday’s ASCD Annual Meeting. Carter and ASCD President Mary Ellen Freeley reported on the state of the Association during the annual convening of leaders and members.

Freeley opened the meeting by highlighting the work of the ASCD Board of Directors during 2005-2006, activities that included strengthening the Leadership Council and its influence, participating in ASCD’s first Leadership for Effective Advocacy and Practice Institute, and refining the nominations process.

“It has been a wonderful year, a productive year, and a year of growth and positive exploration,” said Freeley.

Carter outlined how ASCD is accelerating its work to promote the needs of the whole child—which recasts the definition of a successful learner from one whose achievement is measured solely by academic tests to one who is knowledgeable, emotionally and physically healthy, civically engaged, prepared for economic self-sufficiency, and ready for the world beyond formal schooling.

As part of the multi-year, whole child initiative, ASCD convened the first meeting of the Commission on the Whole Child in January 2006. “This Commission of leading thinkers, researchers, and practitioners, from a wide variety of sectors, is looking at the competencies and habits of mind that young people need for healthy, productive lives,” said Carter. “We have challenged the Commission to make actionable recommendations that will take the report into the media, boardrooms, and legislatures for continued inquiry and, ultimately, transformative change.” He noted that the Commission will reconvene in July to set benchmarks for moving its work forward.

“The impact of our work will only be felt on a massive scale—and make a significant difference in the lives of learners—if, and only if, we make our voices heard,” said Carter. Accordingly, ASCD has been successfully mobilizing for advocacy and expanding opportunities for member influence. ASCD’s advocacy staff, Legislative Committee, and state/local teams have been working on pushing the issues with important implications for public education. Carter observed that affiliates have undertaken increasingly complex influence and advocacy roles both at the state/provincial and national/federal levels.

“The positions adopted by ASCD’s Leadership Council continue to guide our influence and advocacy work in four areas—the achievement gap, high-stakes testing, whole child, and health and learning,” said Carter.

The ASCD executive director called the past year a “record-breaker” for ASCD—with 175,000 members in 135 countries worldwide, 60 affiliates, and three new connected communities. He also reported that ASCD experienced the best financial year in Association history—continuing a trend seen four out of the past five fiscal years.

“The time is right for the ASCD Community to find the passion to go beyond where anyone before us has traveled,” Carter concluded. “Can we reach significance both in today’s world and in the legacy we leave for tomorrow’s children? I think we can.”

School Leadership Teams “the Engine of Change”

Jan Keating believes that well-managed leadership teams are key to ensuring that schools remain flexible enough to serve student needs. In her Conference session, “Transforming Your School through Shared Leadership,” she maintained that essential change cannot happen without a collaborative team of educators guiding the process.

A purposeful approach to building the team and guiding its work makes it effective.

“The leadership team is the engine of change in your school. Schools have to change all the time. A leadership team gives a school the capacity to adapt,” said the former biology teacher and principal who has worked in both Illinois and California. “Schools are like living organisms. If an organism cannot adapt to the changing environment, it will cease to exist. If allowed to change and adapt to fit its environment, the organism will evolve and flourish.”

Keating said the composition of leadership teams may vary from school to school. Generally the team members are teachers, although that’s not essential. She urged educators to avoid the easy route of simply appointing department heads. “The leadership team cannot be a political place,” she said.

Team members must share a commitment to ensuring that the best curricula are in place and that the best instruction is taking place in every classroom.

Keating said strong leadership teams can effectively tackle several critical tasks.

• Driving instructional improvement. Teams are a forum for sharing best instructional practices and determining how to make them available to the entire faculty. Teams are also well suited for addressing grading issues and interpreting data that can be used to improve instruction.
• Hiring and developing good teachers. Developing teacher recruitment strategies, establishing interview processes, setting up induction and mentoring programs, and directing professional development are all appropriate team tasks.
• Setting and communicating policy. Keating views leadership teams as the prime mechanism for researching, debating, and deciding school policy matters. Team members are charged with gathering relevant information and viewpoints from their colleagues, and building buy-in among other teachers.

Keating urged educators to use rigorous processes for conducting team business and considers team participation a formal part of members’ job descriptions.

The results can be dramatic. At Pacific Collegiate School, a Santa Cruz, Calif., public charter secondary school where Keating served as principal until recently, a strong focus on team leadership led to significantly better AP exam participation and passage rates, higher SAT scores, lower student attrition, and greater enrollment. Collaboration works, she said.

“By setting up a shared leadership team, you are setting up a professional learning community,” Keating said. “Everyone is working toward the important goal of improving curriculum and instruction in the classroom.”

What's your experience with collaborative or team leadership? Does it work--or is it a lot of work with few results? Tell us about the team leadership barriers and benefits you have encountered -- just click on "Comments" below.

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ASCD offers several important resources addressing teacher leadership, which is essential to effective shared leadership teams. Of particular note is Teacher Leadership That Strengthens Professional Practice, a new book by Charlotte Danielson that delivers practical strategies for helping teachers become effective leaders in their schools.

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Chicago Teachers Learn to Build Academic Vocabulary

Several hundred teachers and other educators from the Chicago Public Schools participated in Pre-Conference Workshops designed to introduce them to the principles that help students build academic vocabulary.

Separate sessions on "Building Background Knowledge for Vocabulary Development," were conducted for elementary and secondary practitioners. Facilitators were Phyllis Pajardo and Tim Westerberg.

The importance of academic vocabulary is growing in the wake of new research showing that the ability to use the particular language of any discipline is a strong predictor of how well students will learn the subject when they come to school. Students who have "advantaged" academic vocabulary generally do better in school. Students with "disadvantaged" academic vocabulary generally struggle.

The more students understand the academic terms in content standards, the easier it is for them to understand information they may read or hear about the topic. Pajardo and Westerberg contend that teaching specific terms in a consistently effective way to all students is one of the strongest actions a teacher can take to ensure that students have the academic background knowledge they need to understand the content they encounter in school.

Building academic vocabulary works in all classrooms and subject areas, they said. Specific techniques for teaching academic vocabulary include this six-step process:

1. Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term.
2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.
3. Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representing the term or phrase.
4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms.
5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.
6. Involve students periodically in games that allow them to play with terms.

ASCD offers a number of resources for educators interested in learning more about building academic vocabulary. You can listen to the experts discuss the topic in a free audio question-and-answer session. In addition, the recently published Building Academic Vocabulary: A Teacher's Manual offers practical advice on implementing classroom activities.

Westerberg called on session participants to take their new-found knowledge back to their schools and educate their colleagues on this best practice. "There are two ways to improve results: redesign the school based on best practices, or get new kids," he said. "If anything significant happens this decade in our schools, it will be because of your leadership on this kind of issue."

Have you had success building academic vocabulary? Tell us how (or give your thoughts on this innovative yet common-sense idea) by clicking "comments" below.

E-Communication: Boosting Parental Involvement

Getting parents involved in their kids' educations is considered one of the toughest -- and potentially most rewarding -- challenges in education today. A recent MetLife teacher survey found that new teachers view engaging their students' parents as the single most difficult aspect of the job.

Yet there is ample evidence that parental-involvement efforts pay off handsomely, in more and better student learning, higher test scores, better attendance, and fewer behavioral problems. How to achieve such worthy results?

The March edition of Edutopia, the magazine of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, argues that technology offers one of the best routes toward improving communication between schools, teachers, and parents. Electronic mail and Web pages provide a convenient way for parents and teachers to stay in touch, update each other on student progress, and ask and answer questions about what's going on in class and at home. Edutopia says these strategies can facilitate electronic communication.

• Assign an e-mail address to all faculty and staff. For working parents especially, e-mail may be the most effective way of staying in touch with teachers. Of course, teachers will need regular access to a computer for e-mail to work well.
• Start school and class Web pages. They are great for giving parents and caregivers access to assignments, schedules, and notices. Use them to show off student work too! Keep the pages current and update them often to encourage frequent visits.
• Send electronic newsletters. Cut out the middleman (the student whose backpack may house a semester's worth of school fliers) and send an e-newsletter directly to parents. They combine the best features of both e-mail and Web pages. Be sure to offer paper versions for parents who don't have access to a computer.
• Put student data online. Password-protected information on each child can help parents stay on top of their kids' grades, attendance, even lunch-buying habits. Edutopia notes that access to academic performance information can help parents head off problems before they become crises.
• Consider providing laptops to take home. It's an expensive option, but many schools have found that sending computers home with students fosters learning and makes it easier for parents to keep up with what their kids are doing in class.

What's your experience with using technology to increase parent involvement? Click "comments" below to share your story.