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.”

Curriculum Mapping on the Edge

When author and consultant Heidi Hayes Jacobs, an expert on curriculum mapping, asked her audience whether they used mapping software, more than one-third of them raised their hands.

Jacobs expressed no surprise at this widespread use of computer software to support curriculum mapping. “This isn’t going away -- any more than e-mail and the Internet are going away,” she said.

Curriculum mapping is the practice of charting -- in detail -- what topics are taught by each teacher during the course of a given school year.  When the maps are combined, it's possible to identify gaps and duplications in what students are being taught.  It's also possible to ensure that the curriculum "builds" appropriately from year to year.  Besides curriculum topics, some maps include assessments, samples of student work, or teachers' professional development plans.

Curriculum mapping makes teachers’ work transparent, Jacobs noted. Each teacher should enter his or her work into a curriculum map, she said, and each teacher should also have access to the map of every other teacher. “Mapping is overt work, not covert activity,” Jacobs said.

Because it reveals so much, mapping is intimate, and it can seem threatening, Jacobs acknowledged. But it also leads to more collegiality among teachers. “Not only do we share each other’s work, we appreciate each other’s work.”

Curriculum mapping also becomes a key tool for sustaining professional learning communities. “Mapping becomes an electronic town square,” Jacobs said.

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ASCD offers several resources to help teacher learn about curriculum mapping. Getting Results with Curriculum Mapping, by Heidi Hayes Jacobs guides the practical implementation of a mapping process. You can read the book’s first chapter here.

Jacobs' Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment K-12 provides a good introduction to the topic.

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Reporting by Scott Willis, ASCD's director of book acquisitions and development.

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.”

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.