ASCD Inservice

Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers, or No More PD Root Canals

Sometimes, I scroll the tweets referencing the term "inservice" and wish we'd gone with a different blog name. "Sitting in really dumb inservice," "booored in inservice," and "two more hours of inservice and then freedom!" are pretty common sentiments.

David Sousa's "Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers" in the free, online June issue of Educational Leadership takes these critiques to heart, er, head, and asks:

As teachers participate in learning activities, how do their brains determine what—if anything—to take away? And how can we use insights into the brain's workings to improve learning activities for teachers?

If you're involved in planning or providing professional development, you'll want to read Sousa's guidelines for aligning PD with how emotions, feedback, past experiences, and meaning affect learning in the adult brain.

Finding the Right Words in Parent-Teacher Conferences

In a bonus, free, online June edition, Educational Leadership revisits teacher learning from different angles. "But What Do I Say?" looks at learning how to conduct parent–teacher conferences—important opportunities to work with students' guardians as part of the school community. Teachers are often unprepared for the variety of situations they'll encounter in conference, the authors say. Syracuse University's semesterlong Parent/Caregiver Conferencing Model program helps pre-and inservice teachers move beyond winging it and develop strong communication skills to connect school and home.

The model borrows from the medical school practice of using standardized patients—actors performing specific symptoms, giving doctors and nurses opportunities to practice their diagnosis and communication skills. At Syracuse, standardized parents perform in a range of specific scenarios—a mother concerned about students bullying her son for his perceived sexuality, parents who disagree with the content of assigned readings, a parent whose autistic child is about to enter an inclusive classroom for the first time, and so on.

While the standardized parents are trained in exactly what to say in the conference, the teachers in the program are not. Their simulated conference is taped, and then, in debriefing, they discuss the interaction as a class and focus on one area to improve in the next rehearsal.

Go to the article to view a video of a simulated conference, and find out what students and directors in the program learned about teacher–caregiver communication, and the guidelines they developed to improve it.

What guides you in conferences with caregivers? What's been the biggest challenge?

Are Noncollege Youth Sidelined?

U.S. high school-age youth who aren't enrolled in traditional college prep classes are not being invited to participate in challenging community service or complex conversations about civic dilemmas, according to Peter Levine's "The Civic Opportunity Gap," in this month's Educational Leadership.

Whopping youth voter turnout was highly touted in the 2008 presidential election, but only 1 in 14 non-college-educated youth turned out at the polls (compared to 1 in 4 with some college credit), Levine notes. Although Levine, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, points to several causes of this "civic education gap," the different options that public schools present college-bound compared to non-college-bound teens is one culprit, he insists:

Researchers Joseph Kahne and Ellen Middaugh found that, within a given high school, students taking college preparatory courses were more likely than those taking less advanced courses to report that their classes included such experiences as service learning, classroom discussions of issues, field trips, or visiting speakers. When we compare suburban schools to urban and rural schools . . . we find that privileged schools are more likely to offer interactive civic education.

Middle and high school educators: Does your school welcome all students into civic activities and classroom discussion of social problems? Are some kids sidelined into menial volunteer tasks?

Stirring Up Justice

What happens when adults send youth the message that certain social justice issues are off limits? In "Stirring Up Justice," Laurel Schmidt says, "Children may well respond to the discovery that the topic of social justice is off limits by thinking that

• Injustice is a fact of life; there's no point in trying to change human nature.
• Injustice is unfortunate, but getting involved is too discouraging.
• Perhaps the victims brought it on themselves. They deserve it."

Schmidt acknowledges that social justice can be messy, exhausting work, but asks, "Are there some behaviors or conditions that we simply must address, no matter how difficult or unpopular our work will be?"

What behaviors or conditions do you believe schools have a responsibility to address? How has or hasn't your school engaged in these issues?

Schmidt notes that "kids rarely accept injustice as the status quo".

What issues have you seen students get fired up about? How did you respond and why? 

The Window into Green

How can we expect future generations to be able to comprehend and solve environmental problems if we only arm them with "bumper-sticker answers to lapel-pin questions"?

Environmental literacy, says Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director of the Lower Merion Conservancy, has been side-lined by NCLB mandates, a sort of ad hoc, a la carte approach to environmental learning opportunities, and a cultural shift toward indoor leisure activities. 

Educators and policymakers can reverse these trends; tons of data on the benefits of environmental and outdoor education and promising models lead the way to change. Weilbacher says,

As I recount in my article, "The Window into Green", in the May issue of Educational Leadership, a resurgent wave of interest in the environment has been cresting, and it turns out that teaching kids about the environment in the outdoors does them a world of good in other areas too.  
 
The evidence mounts: greener kids are smarter, too. But what are the obstacles to better environmental education? 

One-Size-Doesn't-Fit-ELL

Our guest blogger Judith Rance-Roney describes a personal encounter that illustrates the theme of her article in the April 2009 Educational Leadership. In the article, she points out that adolescent English language learners are a heterogeneous population, and teachers need to craft education plans that address their unique individual needs. Too often, that doesn't happen:

In one of my forays to a nearby school, I sat in on a sheltered math class for English language learners in a district known for its best practice in educating ELLs, many of whom were long-term English learners and native speakers of Spanish. The teacher had plastered the walls with terms, used visuals to illustrate concepts, and used copious amounts of Spanish to scaffold the math learning.

So, here I am in the back of the room observing and taking notes about how teachers are applying best practice introduced in the professional development program. Over to the right in the back with me is a lone student, desk tight in the back corner, flipping the pages of his math textbook and doodling in his notebook, totally oblivious to the activity at the blackboard.

"Oh yeah," the teacher explained afterwards. "That’s Piotr. He came from Poland a few months ago. He doesn't speak any English."

H-E-L-L-O. In this teacher's "No Child Left Behind" practices, Piotr did not even appear at the starting gate.

Have you had a similar experience with a one-size-fits-all mentality when educating adolescent English learners? 

And in response to Rance-Roney's article, Mary Ann Zehr at EdWeek's Learning the Language is looking for examples of schools that mix ELLs with native-English-speaking students but still give the ELLs focused instruction to acquire language skills.

How Are Boston's ELLs Faring Under Sheltered Immersion?

A report released April 8 by the Mauricio Gaston Institute in Boston shows troubling trends in student engagement and achievement among English language learners (ELLs) in Boston's public schools since 2003. A voter referendum in 2002 caused Boston's public schools to switch from transitional bilingual education to sheltered English immersion (in which ELLs are taught in English only) as default instruction.

Among the report's key findings are that the dropout rate for Boston high school students classified as Limited English Proficient nearly doubled from 2003 to 2006. By 2006, high school LEP students had the highest dropout rate of all students compared, although LEP students showed the lowest dropout rates in 2003 when transitional bilingual education was instructional policy. The proportion of LEP students in middle school who dropped out more than tripled.

From the Ballot Box to the Classroom

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*UPDATE* New report shows Boston Students Struggle with English-only Rule

Should state elections decide whether English language learners benefit from bilingual education? In the past 10 years, ballot initiatives in five states attempted to limit bilingual education programs. Supporters of these ballot initiatives argue that native-language instruction hampers ELL students' learning in English and academic subjects. Their opponents say native-language instruction supports language acquisition and content learning while ELLs learn enough English to succeed in all-English classrooms.

"From the Ballot Box to the Classroom," in the April issue of EL, argues against ballot initiatives that limit the range of program options for educating the large and varied ELL population in the U.S.

The authors claim that ballot initiative voters have little information or technical expertise on educating ELL students, and initiative supporters focus their arguments almost entirely on how ELL students learn English, neglecting the broader issue of how students learn language, literacy, and content.

Cast your vote on ballot initiatives legislating ELL education, and tell us what determined your vote in the comments.

The Demographic Imperative

Recently, D.C.-area schools voted to abandon the check-one-box system for identifying student race and ethnicity ("Multiracial Pupils to Be Counted in A New Way"). Although the policy change allows for a more accurate portrait of classrooms transformed by immigration and interracial marriage, changing labels will make it harder to monitor progress of groups that have trailed in school, including black and Hispanic students, according to the Washington Post.

The concern is that a flood of demographic data will complicate schools' ability to make policy and program decisions to serve groups facing education challenges. "This will make our whole education system look different, and nobody will know whether we are going forward or backward," said Gary Orfield, codirector of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California in Los Angeles (to the Post).

"The Demographic Imperative," in the April issue of Educational Leadership on English language learners, clarifies the varied means for determining who ELL students are and how their individual paths to U.S. classrooms might influence their achievement, and it offers some brief reflections on research, policy, and practice that support ELL students. 

How might ELL students be helped or hindered by more nuanced student demographic data?

Plagiarism 2.0

Who doesn't care about plagiarism?

Among educators, the answer is surely no one. From that point of agreement, though, we all seem to diverge: Some of us carefully teach citation practices; some enact strict punishments; some establish sound institutional policies for dealing fairly with all students suspected of plagiarism; some advocate honor codes to raise moral awareness and responsibility in our institutions.

In our article "Plagiarism in the Internet Age" in the March 2009 issue of Educational Leadership, Laura J. Davies and I recommend yet another set of responses to craft pedagogy that teaches students how to read their sources critically and work from them rhetorically. Students' skills in critical reading and writing, we believe, are integral to their being able to write without plagiarizing.

Our article offers some suggestions for how critical reading and writing can be taught, but the possibilities are as endless as are the number of teachers who hope their students will be able to write responsibly.

What have you done with your own students to help them engage with source texts?

Posted by Rebecca Moore Howard, 2008-2009 Dean's Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, Binghamton University (on leave from Syracuse University).

Doing Research Right

"The Internet is the biggest revolution in information since the printing press. Never before has so much information been so freely available to so many people." So says William Badke in his March 2009 Educational Leadership article, "Stepping Beyond Wikipedia." However, not all of this information is accurate, and Badke cites numerous studies showing that students are not always able to evaluate the accuracy of information online. He suggests that teachers need to make a conscious effort to integrate information literacy into their instruction.

What's your attitude toward Wikipedia and other online sources? Do you let students cite online material in their research? What guidance should teachers offer to ensure that students are getting accurate information?

OMG- ???

In "Are Digital Media Changing Language?" Naomi S. Baron says that language has never been static. Changes in spelling, syntax, and so on are part of the natural evolution of language. Baron identifies two changes that seem to have come with new technologies: (1) incorporation of acronyms into everyday language, and (2) decreased certainty about whether a string of words should be hyphenated or treated as one word.

But, to Baron, these changes are relatively minor in comparison to the changes in attitude about language:

Gradually we have become less obsessed with correctness and more focused on tolerance and personal expression. This shift, however admirable, has linguistic consequences.

How do you feel about the shifts in language usage and attitudes about language that have come with new technology? Have you seen these shifts in your students' writing? How do you respond?

Promises and Pitfalls of 2.0

Blogs, wikis, text messaging, virtual realities, and social networking are just a few of the innovations that have become commonplace among today's tech-savvy students--and teachers. The March 2009 issue of Educational Leadership explores the challenges and opportunities that such interactive technology brings to educators. Read or listen to Marge Scherer's Perspectives column for an overview.

What do you see as the greatest benefits of the new Web 2.0 technologies? On the flip side, what do see as the greatest pitfalls of the new media?

What Research Says About the Continuum of Teacher Learning

In the February issue of Educational Leadership, Tracy Huebner writes about the research behind how teachers learn. She cites a study that claims teachers learn in both the individual and interpersonal realms:

In the individual realm, teachers gain knowledge about content and pedagogy, agree or disagree with this knowledge, and make decisions regarding implementation and change. In the interpersonal realm, teachers engage in dialog and collaboration to further develop and support their own learning.

These two realms come together through the phenomenon called sensemaking—deciding what information from the two realms makes sense to incorporate into the classroom and how to incoporate it. Huebner concludes that schools can support teacher learning at two levels: Schools can provide messages to teachers through numerous mediums and then use examples of the practice in action to help the teachers accept the practice.

How does the research match up with teacher learning in your school?

The Curse of the Digitally Illiterate

In his article in the February Educational Leadership ("Learning with Blogs and Wikis"), Bill Ferriter argues that digital tools like RSS feeds and aggregators help educators advance their professional learning. But first, some teachers need to join the ranks of the literate:

One of the moments that defined my thinking about technology in schools came something like 7 years ago. I was sitting in my classroom looking for a technology continuing education class to sign up for in order to retain my teaching certificate—even though I was easily the biggest digital junkie in the building—when an assistant principal walked in begging for help. "Bill," she said, "I saved something on this disk, but it's not there anymore!" Wanting to help, I plugged her disk into my computer. Sure enough, it was blank. "I know I saved it," my colleague cried. "It's got to be there!"

Not quite knowing where to go next, I asked what seemed to be a ridiculously irrelevant question: "Roberta*, you do know the difference between 'Save' and 'Save As'; don’t you?" 

"Of course!" she said. "You use 'Save' when you're working with something that you want to keep for a long time and 'Save As' when your file isn't that important. I must have pushed the 'Save' button about a dozen times. Why isn't my file on that disk?"

Frederick Hess Decries “The New Stupid”

Frederick M. Hess, our guest blogger, provides context for his latest article in the December/January Educational Leadership called "The New Stupid." He asks,

"How do we determine what different data can and can't do, and how do we ensure that policymakers and educators use data wisely?"

A decade ago, as a new assistant professor, I penned a book called Spinning Wheels in which I argued that many disappointing reform proposals were not necessarily ill-conceived but were adopted rashly, implemented chaotically, and dropped. Informed by my own experiences in the schools of Boston and Baton Rouge, I blamed this dynamic less on the folly of district leaders than on largely data-free environments.

I argued that one solution was more reliable data on student outcomes.

It will not surprise those who recall the 1990s that this recommendation was dismissed by many educators who asserted that test scores just weren't a good way to measure school performance. That was the "old stupid."

Can Student-Collected Data Help Teachers?

In the article "Student-Driven Research" in this month's Educational Leadership, authors Makeba Jones and Susan Yonezawa discuss a program in San Diego where students are part of co-research teams that collect data from interviews and surveys of their peers and teachers to offer insight on how to improve curriculum and education practices.

"Students have unique expertise regarding schools," the authors say."[The students] can provide important information about school and classroom practices and policies."

What keeps more schools from drawing on students' experiences as a way to improve public education?

"Silo Thinking?"

In "The Assessment Double Play" in this month's Educational Leadership, Roberta Buhle and Camille L. Z. Blachowicz lament the fact that teachers often store their thinking about testing in a different "silo" from their thinking on instruction. Buhle and Blachowicz define silo communication as "the tendency not to connect one known body of information with another. We see teachers thinking in this fashion when they appear to disregard assessment results when they make instructional decisions."

Have you seen teachers practice silo thinking? How can we avoid it? 

Has Education Research Become Too Polarized?

In his article in this month's Educational Leadership ("The Spectrum of Education Research"), Jeffrey R. Henig claims that many people mistrust the findings of education research because special interest groups often report such findings in a politicized fashion. "On politically contentious policy questions," Henig writes, "opposing cliques are ready and able to muster their own stable of researchers and findings to buttress their claims and challenge those cited by the other side. The seeming malleability of evidence reinforces cynicism."
 
Do you think education research has become too politicized? How do you decide which research to trust?

Getting Kids Googled Well

 In "Footprints in the Digital Age," Will Richardson speaks to the importance of teaching students how to ensure that they are googled well. Some of you might be wary about not only encouraging, but also guiding students in creating publicly available online content.

Here, Will Richardson, our guest EL blogger, gives advice on this topic. Here's what he has to say:

One of the barriers to making our kids "googled well" is the discomfort that many parents have with the idea of putting student work online. The more I think about this and talk with teachers about it, the more convinced I am that the best way to make this work is to start having these conversations in the earliest grades, and to include parents every step of the way.