Annual Conference

The Big Benefits of Books

Book study has helped Brookhaven Middle School transform its culture, principal Larry Collier and assistant principal Danna Jones told their ASCD Annual Conference audience. The Alabama school, whose 720 students are mostly from families in poverty, has seen student achievement climb as teachers have read and discussed books such as these:

• No Excuses, by Samuel Casey Carter

• What Really Matters for Struggling Readers, by Richard L. Allington

• A Framework for Understanding Poverty, by Ruby K. Payne

• Whatever It Takes, by Richard DuFour and others

• Bringing Words to Life, by Isabel Beck and others

• Dream Keepers, by Gloria Ladson-Billings

• When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do, by Kylene Beers.

Educators at the school have implemented ideas they discovered through these books, such as “Data Meetings” where they pinpoint students’ strengths and weaknesses. They have also bolstered math and reading instruction by integrating science and math, and social studies and reading. This curriculum integration has fostered peer coaching, the presenters noted.

Some teachers initially resisted some of the changes, Jones said. But once they began to see the improvement in their students’ achievement, they embraced the new approaches.

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.”

"Help Kids See Themselves as Whole"

Bonnie St. John, Paralympic skier and Sunday’s General Session keynoter, offered perspective for educators who wonder why school sometimes fail to serve the students who could benefit most.

Don’t worry about anything that’s missing, unless it’s your own commitment to finding ways to help kids reach their full potential.

“It’s not about lack of resources. It’s about lack of vision,” she said. “If you’re a student, someone can help you believe. If you’re a teacher or principal, someone can help you get the vision. And that’s when things start to happen.”

St. John said she has relied on a strong sense of the possible — what could be — since she was a girl. When she was five years old, a medical condition led to the amputation of her right leg. Since then, she has won silver and bronze medals in international Paralympic ski competition and become a successful executive coach and sought-after speaker.

She credits her mother — a single mom who was a teacher and principal — with helping her learn not to dwell on limitations, but on the power of a singular idea to transform lives.

“As educators,” she said, “you can help kids see themselves as whole, that they have everything they need” to be successful. Sometimes that means learning that what looks like failure can be achievement in disguise.

When St. John won her medals at the 1984 Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria, her original goal had been modest: just make the U.S. Disabled Ski Team. Once the competition began, she found herself in an unexpected place after her first run down the mountain: First place.

“But there are two runs,” she recounted. “Before the second run, we had gotten word that there was an icy spot, and women had been crashing out.” Conventional wisdom said a solid, conservative trip could realistically net a gold medal. Avoid the dangerous ice and victory could be at hand.

“So I’m on my run and the adrenaline is flowing and my friends and sponsors and teammates are cheering,” St. John said. “Now I think I’m past the ice, and I’m gonna win. Now what happens when you think the worst is past and you relax?

“I crashed,” she remembered.

“There I am laying in the snow on my derrière. Now you all are high profile leaders, so you know what it’s like to screw up right in front of everyone. So you know what I’m talking about. I just wanted to disappear. But I got up, got my equipment together, and finished the race.”

Lo and behold, it was good enough for third place. “That’s this bronze medal I’m wearing right now,” she said, flashing the hardware. It turned out that every other top skier had fallen too. Proud as she was, St. John said she learned something that day that was even more valuable than her medal. “The women who got gold and silver got up too. But they earned their medals because they got up just a little faster than I did.”

Photo credit: Mark Regan

Canadian Principal Named Outstanding Young Educator

Charles Coleman, principal of Khowhemun Elementary School in Duncan, British Columbia, has been named the winner of ASCD’s 2005 Outstanding Young Educator Award (OYEA). Coleman was honored at Saturday’s Opening General Session.

Coleman is the first non-U.S. educator to win the prestigious award. “I am gratified, humbled, and surprised that ASCD selected me as Outstanding Young Educator. I didn’t think you would pick a Canadian,” he joked.

He was selected for the leadership and team building he displayed in increasing student achievement in reading and mathematics at a school with a large “First Nations” student population of native people. Coleman said he and his team of faculty and staff at Khowhemun regularly apply the principles of differentiated instruction, individualized learning, multiple intelligences, and action research to serve the needs of their students.

“Working as a collaborative team in a learning community, I believe we can make a difference,” he said. “It is with the kids of Khowhemun mind that I gratefully accept this award.”

"The key strategies that Mr. Coleman initiated were  focused goals, parent involvement, targeted intervention, and First Nations support," said Tom Hierck, president of the British Columbia Principals' & Vice-Principals' Association, who nominated Coleman for the award. "His colleagues look to him for leadership, his peers have recognized his contributions, his staff feel empowered and supported, his parent community feels valued, and his students feel cared about."

Read more about Charles Coleman in the April issue of Educational Leadership magazine.

Spring nominations for the 2006 OYEA close on April 15. To nominate a deserving colleague, please click here. Two nominees for the 2006 award will be selected from the spring cadre of nominees. Two others will be selected in a fall round of nominations.

Photo Credit: Mark Regan

Answering the Perplexities of Parent Involvement

To successfully get African American and Hispanic parents involved in education requires answering what Bre Peeler Sanders calls the "perplexities." These are the critical questions that educators must answer to improve parent engagement in school. Unfortunately, answering them requires bridging the communication gap between parents and educators and resolving the interrelated issues surrounding parent involvement that perplex most educators.

Most of these questions can be addressed by teachers and principals, according to Sanders. Her sold out session, "Lessons Learned: Actively Engaging African American and Hispanic Parents," was engaging and lively, with audience members laughing with Sanders as she recalled her own adventures and missteps as a parent liaison at Riverside Intermediate School outside of Atlanta.

Sanders started her efforts to increase parent engagement by randomly selecting families to survey about their involvement in the school. Many of the parents were hard to get in touch with, often because of the long hours they worked, but Sanders kept contacting them until she was able meet with them. She joked that the parents on her list took to calling her "the stalker" for her relentless efforts to meet with them at their homes.

Because these were often parents who did not participate at the school, Sanders found that it was important to reach out to them in their homes to ensure their involvement in the survey, and also to get a better feel for some of the issues confronting them, which would keep them from becoming actively engaged at the school. Doing this, Sanders discovered that there are many barriers to parent involvement, many of which are interrelated, including

• Lack of time
• Single parents
• Undocumented status
• Boring meetings
• Language barriers
• Customer service factors

Sanders quickly found that the first critical question she had to resolve was "What exactly constitutes successful parental involvement?"

When she asked African American parents what they felt their responsibilities were as parents, they responded that their role was to support school efforts and discipline their children. Hispanic parents, on the other hand, believed that their role was to help with homework. So, in most cases, when Sanders asked these parents why they weren't involved at school, they were offended, asking her what she meant. This led her to explain how educators define parent involvement.

Sanders focused on these groups, along with educators at her school, because 65 percent of the students at Riverside are African American, and 30 percent are Hispanic. As she talked more with the Hispanic parents, Sanders found that there were culture gaps that needed to be bridged. For example, in Mexico, where most of the Hispanic parents from her district come from, there is no PTA or equivalent organization, and there is no parent involvement at schools.

This is no small issue in her school, where when Sanders started four years ago, there was one Hispanic student that she knew of, but where there are now eight or nine Hispanic students in each class.

In addition, in a school where 85 percent of the students receive lunch assistance, many of the parents, African American and Hispanic, work multiple jobs, and many work intensive hours. Twelve hour work days are not uncommon for parents. Sanders explained that "when they work three jobs, you're not going to see them in the classroom. And, the catch-22 is that if you do see them, it's because they lost a job."

After trying several involvement strategies that didn't work, such as credit repair and computer classes for parents, Sanders finally discovered, through continued communication with the parents, what works to increase active engagement:

• Food
• Positive attitudes
• Personal relationships
• Interpreters
• Sense of belonging
• Child care at meetings
• Transportation

Individually, each of these addressed a specific need; taken together, they resolved a set of interrelated problems that kept many parents from becoming involved at the school. Many of these, such as positive attitudes and personal relationships, had to be implemented by educators throughout the school to succeed. Teachers and administrators were glad to make these changes, knowing that they were in response to parents' needs. "Teachers want to be involved, but they don't know what to do," Sanders observed.

By getting teachers the information they needed and by educating and encouraging parents, Sanders was able to resolve many of the perplexities preventing parents from becoming actively engaged in school.

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• Learn how you can use technology to boost parental involvement in school.
• Take ASCD's poll on parental involvement in schools and explore our list of related resources.

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Is parental involvement a perplexing issue in your school? Do your students' parents hold different views about what their role in their child's school should be? Have any of Sanders' involvement strategies worked for you? Use the "Comments" link below to tell us about your experiences.

Levine Urges Educators to Tap into Brain Power

Dr. Mel Levine, Saturday morning's General Session speaker, confirmed what educators have long understood: Brains don't develop at the same rate in every kid, and teachers had better pay attention lest they lose students who are perfectly capable of learning.

The rapid and dramatic development that happens from age 11 through young adulthood makes learning challenging, but it also makes learning happen. Levine says brain research supports education strategies that:

Avoid labels. Levine said, "The trouble with labels is that they are reductionist--they seek to name a condition and not address it. They are essentially pessimistic. The vast majority of kids who are labeled as having reading comprehension problems are probably having active working memory problems. They need to find ways to hold short-term memory in their minds. Enough with labels."

Use the most appropriate assessments. Timed tests don't have much of a place in Levine's world, nor does memorization. "It's much better to understand where you can go on the rivers of Africa rather than being able to name all the rivers of Africa," Levine said. "Better still is explaining the contributions of Africa's rivers to the people who live there."

Recognize developmental readiness. Fidgety middle-schoolers and bored high school students are behaving in ways that reflect how their brains are growing. "One of the most important things we can teach kids to do is work slowly," Levine said. "As the pre-frontal cortex develops, children are dealing with problems of impulsivity and learning not to jump to the first conclusion they draw or decision they make. What's that mean? To me it means no more timed tests. It's much better to say, 'Take as long as you need, but you can only use two pages' than it is to say 'You have an hour to tell us as much as you can.'"

Builds on strengths. Levine urged educators to match instruction not only to developmental readiness, but also to what students can actually do with their learning. "Imagine hiring an adult. Would you ask them 'How's your rote memory?' Of course not," he said. "That's not generally an important skill. Actually, it's almost irrelevant."

Getting kids to tap into that relevant learning is what education is about. Levine said young brains have a hard time filtering what's important to know.

"Problems with significance detection are probably the most common issue among high school kids," noted Levine. "They're trying to take it all in, and that is difficult to do. Many high school kids just cannot separate what's important from what's not."

He recalled a young Stanford math professor who had a firm grasp of the problem. "I asked him what it was like to teach calculus to college freshmen," Levine recounted. "He said, 'Well, you know how it is. Some of them just get it, and the others you have to teach.'"

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• Explore ASCD's newest video-based staff development program, Teaching the Adolescent Brain.
• Read a chapter from the second edition of Eric Jensen's Teaching with the Brain in Mind.

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Do you have experiences with students developing at different rates? What strategies have been most successful? Share with us using the "Comments" link below.

Photo Credit: Mark Regan

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.

Education Data and the "Whole Child"

ASCD has announced the public release of the report, The Whole Child in a Fractured World by Harold "Bud" Hodgkinson. ASCD commissioned the paper for use by the Commission on the Whole Child, which held its inaugural meeting last month in Washington, D.C.

Convened by ASCD, the Commission is composed of a group of leading thinkers, researchers, and practitioners from a wide variety of sectors.

ASCD Executive Director Gene R. Carter noted that the Hodgkinson paper is designed to serve as a resource document for the Commission's work. The Commission is charged with recasting 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.

The report documents the "splendid isolation of the U.S. educational system (or better yet … educational systems)," providing an overview of the complexity, the challenges, and the flaws in measuring efficacy. For example:

• The U.S. Department of Education contributes only 10 percent of total education spending, but it issues 90 percent of the regulations that schools must follow.
• Many dropouts actually "disappear" from the dropout rosters in the current high stakes high school testing environment.
• The transience of U.S. students results in flawed assessments. According to the report, "the error can be 15 percent in states, and up to 50 percent in individual schools," using the primary testing unit for No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Hodgkinson, director of the Center for Demographic Policy, Institute for Educational Leadership, proposes five themes for consideration.

• Equity. Who gets access and who doesn't?
• Coordination. Should there be one national standard for student proficiencies, set by the federal government, or a standard for each state? Who decides?
• Knowledge Integration. How can we develop a common vocabulary for education discourse?
• Sequence. In regards to learning and teaching, what should happen to people at what moment in their lives?
• Wholeness.  Could schools collaborate with health, school, and community organizations in maximizing potential using a whole child approach?

"ASCD has convened the Commission on the Whole Child, because we believe that the success of each learner can only be achieved through a whole child approach to learning and teaching," said Carter. "Parents, teachers, and the community believe schools should focus on developing students who are academically proficient and physically and emotionally healthy and respectful, responsible, and caring."

"If decisions about education policy and practice started with 'What works for the child?' how would resources—time, space, and human—be arrayed to ensure each child's success?" said Carter. "If the student were truly at the center of the system, would could we achieve?"

Look for more information on the Commission and its work in coming months.

What's your view? How can schools nurture the whole child in an education environment that sometimes seems intent on squeezing out anything that doesn't contribute to the bottom line of test scores? Or does concern for the whole child go hand in hand with all manner of school-improvement efforts? Click on "Comments" below to tell us what you think.

Protecting GLBTQ Students' Rights to Safe Schools

What would happen if your school elected an out lesbian as homecoming king? If students wear "straight pride" t-shirts, what happens in your school halls? And what about the gay families that sit shoulder-to-shoulder on parent-teacher nights with families whose religious or political beliefs deny the validity of same-sex unions?

A recent paper, by the First Amendment Center and cosponsored by ASCD, "Public Schools and Sexual Orientation: A First Amendment framework for finding common ground," maps the benchmarks for addressing issues like these. The framework asserts that educators must first and foremost reaffirm that public schools belong to all Americans--students of all identities need to feel safe and respected in school.

Educators can use the First Amendment Center's guidelines to broker honest dialogue that involves all parties and seeks the common good. The three R's of the First Amendment--Rights, Responsibilities, and Respect--provide the framework for "constructive dialogue and cooperation across deep differences" in public schools seeking common ground on issues surrounding sexual orientation. Read the full consensus guidelines document.

Learn more about creating safe learning environments for GLBTQ students by attending one or all of these Annual Conference sessions:

• #1341 The High Cost of Homophobia: Legal Duties and Liabilities
  Saturday, April 1, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. Presented by James Madigan, Lambda Legal, Chicago, Ill.

• #2151 Building State Capacity: Healthy Outcomes for Sexual-Minority Youth
  Sunday, April 2, 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. Presented by Bonnie Edmondson and Cheryl Carotenuti, Connecticut State Department of Education, Middletown, Conn.

• #3216T Understanding Gay and Lesbian Youth: How School Counselors Can Help
  Monday, April 3, 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Presented by David Campos, University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, Tex.

In the past, ASCD also cosponsored a GLBT legal guide with the School Boards Association: Download GLBTBrochure1.pdf