Annual Conference

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.”

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

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.

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.