If I Could Get a Do-Over

I have always been fairly inept at playground and backyard games. I was a better target than I was a hurler of dodgeballs. I was the weak link in the Red Rover chain. And I lacked the necessary coordination to be skilled at soccer and football.

My one-year-younger brother, Kevin, was a natural athlete. Sometimes, I’d wind up playing some sort of game--basketball, football, soccer--with him and other kids in the neighborhood. Kevin was a master of the mysterious-to-me concept of the “do-over.” He possessed the knowhow to stop the game after a terrible move (a missed shot, a poorly executed play, a flubbed field goal, or a similar embarrassment) and ask, “Can I get a do-over?” There was never any discussion. We just backed up the game and redid what had just occurred. It was the pick-up game equivalent of a Get Out of Jail Free card in Monopoly.

I’m not sure that I ever called for a “do-over,” probably because I wasn’t confident that my second attempt would improve on whatever I had done terribly. Or maybe I didn’t understand the “do-over” protocol in detail and was hesitant to try to redeem one.

If I had to call a “do-over” today, however, it wouldn’t be on the athletic field. Instead, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’d do differently if I were to return to the classroom.

This year I’ve had the opportunity to visit hundreds of classrooms and to talk with outstanding teachers across the district. I’ve witnessed tiny and large-scale miracles, seen significant progress occur over time in particularly challenging classes of students, and had the time to engage in professional learning and reflection about curriculum and instruction.

Some of what has made me uncomfortable this year occurred when I noticed things that I routinely did in my classroom that I now recognize as practices that need revisiting. Knowing what I now know, if I could call a do-over for my 22 years in the classroom, here are six things I’d do differently:

1. Change the way I provide feedback. As I look back on the thousands of words I have written and the millions of red marks I’ve made on my students’ papers over the years, I realize that often my purpose in writing those comments was to justify a grade. If I circle enough of your spelling and punctuation errors, that’ll prove that you deserve the C you’re receiving on this essay. What I should have been doing instead was conserving my energy for creating meaningful, actionable feedback for improvement. The purpose of feedback is to help students get better at what they’re doing. Feedback that is not heeded is a waste of time for the teacher and the student. Furthermore, destructive rather than constructive feedback doesn’t do much to motivate students: Even though I gave you an A, here’s all the stuff you did wrong.  If I had a do-over, I’d give my students concrete advice on how to improve and provide them with time and opportunities to apply that feedback to the same assignment or to another one with similar aims.  
2. Rethink my reasons for giving assignments. I am guilty of giving assignments for dubious reasons: The kids need to be accountable for this. If I don’t take a grade on it, they won’t do it. My students need to learn responsibility and the value of hard work. Parents will want to see a certain number of grades in my gradebook at this point. The grading period is ending, and the kids need another major grade. If I don’t give them a picky quiz, how will I know they read? My students didn’t do so well showing mastery on the test, so they need a project to raise their grades. They ought to be doing some work for my class outside of class.  From what I’ve learned this year, I now believe that assignments should fulfill one of several purposes:  to allow students to acquire new information or content that they will do something else with in class, to practice new skills, and to demonstrate mastery. The grades students receive should communicate to the students and parents the student’s level of mastery of the course objectives. Every assignment should be relevant to the overall learning targets of the course. My do-over classroom would have fewer assignments, fewer grades, more opportunity to practice, and a gradebook that contains useful data for students and parents about progress and mastery.
3. Facilitate structured student talk, not just student talk. I was not a teacher who was consistently guilty of doing all the talking. My students spent a great deal of time interacting with others and processing what they were learning. What I didn’t do, however, was put structures in place to make sure all students were contributing equally to the conversation. If I were to look back at a video of my classroom, I’d see the same eager students doing most of the talking in full-class conversations, and I’d watch many students sit by quietly as their peers did the talking and thinking for them. In my do-over, I’d set up more specific parameters for student talk--timed pair/shares, round-robin discussions, assigning A and B partners with different talk tasks--with accountability built in for each student to participate. By doing this, I’d keep the learning conversations flowing with participation by all.  
4. Provide more formative feedback and less summative feedback. Why, oh why did I watch students work on projects and assignments and not give more helpful feedback along the way? More writing conferencing, more group huddles, and more check-ins along the way would be a routine part of my do-over classroom. I’d spend time commenting on earlier drafts before students turned them in for final grading so that my students could reap the benefits of putting that feedback into practice. I’d check in with groups working on presentations and projects and give them more guidance prior to their actual due date. Students should receive feedback when they can still do something about it; there’s no sense in expending effort telling students what they should have done at the end if they have no opportunity to learn from that.
5. Be more flexible about grades. In the movie The Wizard of Oz, after the house squishes the Wicked Witch of the East, another witch shows up in all her greenish glory to claim her sister’s ruby slippers. Glinda, the smug witch of the North, points to the sparkly shoes on Dorothy’s feet and tells the witch, “It’s too late! There they are and there they’ll stay.” I fear that sometimes I might have been that smug teacher who, when students discovered a low grade in the gradebook, just looked at them with feigned regret and said, “It’s too late. There the grade is, and there it’ll stay.” It’s the teacher equivalent of “Too bad, so sad,” and it must be as frustrating to the students as Glinda’s proclamation was to her bright green nemesis. And, honestly, what’s the benefit of a low reading quiz grade to a student? Does it motivate her to go back and read the history chapter? Not if she can’t improve her grade by doing so. If I had to do it over again, I’d offer more opportunities for students to demonstrate mastery and raise those grades. My gradebook would be a fluid work in progress throughout the grading period. I know providing students with multiple attempts at mastery would be unwieldy at times and that there would have to be limits put in place for the sake of practicality, but students learn at different speeds and shouldn’t be penalized for taking a little longer if they are demonstrating legitimate effort along the way.
6. Keep my big mouth shut. Here’s something I never felt bad about in my own class until I had the opportunity to watch teachers and students in other people’s classrooms. Students view the teacher as an expert. That’s not necessarily a bad thing since the teacher probably ought to know more than the students about the subject that’s being taught. The problem occurs when the teacher is trying to facilitate student discussion about, say, a work of literature or art. As soon as the teacher gives an opinion, students view that as the right answer or correct interpretation, and they consider their own points to be less valid. In the classroom, I often concluded student discussions with a final summation containing my own opinion. In my do-over fantasy, I’d learn to keep my big mouth shut sometimes and let the student discussion suffice. Sure, there would be times when I needed to ask a few artful questions to lead them closer to my way of thinking or help them notice an important point they missed, but I’d do my best to guide my students to arrive at the better response rather than waiting for me to make a proclamation of the Truth According to McKinney.

Teaching is part science and part art. Great teachers continually refine their craft. One of the best things about teaching is that, for most of us, we get a “do-over” every year with a brand new set of kids. You’ve seen my Top Six List of changes I’d make. What’s on your list?

   

  

    

Lasting Impressions

“Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses.” My sixth grade math teacher, Mr. Roberts, wrote that in my Jackson Elementary yearbook. I had no idea what it meant at the time, and I had to ask my parents to interpret. They tried to explain, but I was probably too occupied with studying for the upcoming spelling test, reading enough books to qualify for the blue-ribbon certificate from the library, and going to my All-City Choir rehearsal to consider what Mr. Roberts was trying to say to me.   

In retrospect, Mr. Roberts was right. I’m hardwired for staying busy. I’ve spent a lifetime overscheduling my calendar and adding items to an unending to-do list.  I generally feel a bit guilty when I have downtime; I’m like a fast-food employee with a manager who barks, “If you’ve got time for leanin’, you’ve got time for cleanin’.” I’m a reluctant rose-sniffer.

From time to time, I’ll harken back to the words of Mr. Roberts and think about his wisdom. He could see in 12-year-old Craig a trait that would haunt me all my life, and his brief comment in my yearbook is among the most profoundly relevant things anyone has written to me.  Consequently, I make conscious efforts to slow down and enjoy things in the midst of my busyness. I pause to savor a great meal or watch a beautiful sunset. I carve out time to spend with the people I love. I grant myself permission to do nothing for a day, and I do my best to live that day guilt-free.

I’m not sure Mr. Roberts knew when he was signing my paperback yearbook that he was going to be someone I would still think about 35 years later. I don’t remember his being my favorite teacher or even one that I recall feeling a connection with in the classroom. But he is the only teacher whose advice I can quote to you today.

As adults who work with kids, we never know the impact we have on the students we teach. Just yesterday, I visited with a student I taught last year who told me how much he treasured a piece of advice I’d given him when he was a freshman. I had forgotten the conversation nearly completely until he reminded me. As a result of what we talked about, he's made some adjustments in the way he approaches school and prioritizes his time and activities. He seemed like a much happier and more balanced version of his earlier self.

In these final days of school, remember that you leave with your students more than just knowledge of a subject. What you have to share with them is more than content. You have the opportunity to change their hearts, to plant the seeds that will grow into something profound and life-altering in years to come.

The end of the school year is a pivotal time. As much as students are excited to be finished and move on, they are equally apprehensive about what lies ahead. You represent stability. You have seen them grow for a year or more. You might be someone they admire and see as a source of wisdom. You’ve got some credibility.

Be intentional about leaving your students with some wisdom that will guide them on their future journeys. Some of it will get tossed out the window on the road of life to litter the highway, but some of it will become a part of the map that guides that young person into a better future.

MisCornceptions

MisCornceptions

What People Don’t Get About Cornell Notes

I have a confession to make. For the first few years after my school adopted AVID, I hated Cornell Notes. I just didn’t see the point of them. All this hoopla over a two-column sheet of paper seemed overdone and ridiculous. And stupid. That’s right. I thought Cornell Notes were stupid.  

Since that time, however, I’ve grown in my knowledge and understanding of the AVID Focused Note-taking system and, now that I comprehend the “why” of Cornell Notes, I have become quite a fan.

Perhaps there are a few of you who are like I used to be--skeptical of the effectiveness of this note-taking style AVID has so enthusiastically championed. You’re the target audience for this week’s Wednesday WICOR. I hope to address some of the common misCornceptions about Cornell Notes and help you see how your students can benefit from using this brain-based system for studying and learning.

MisCornception #1: Cornell Notes are more about the format than about the thinking involved.    

There’s nothing magical about the piece of paper a student uses to write Cornell Notes. In fact, a student could create similarly effective notes using a number of formats as long as the process used for note-taking remains intact. This process consists of several steps: 1. Setup: The student sets up the notes with a topic and an essential question (usually provided by the teacher). 2. Note-taking: The students takes notes over the reading, lecture, video, or other input in whatever style they prefer. 3. Revising: “To revise” literally means “to look again,” and this stage is when the student looks again at the notes with a critical eye to make better sense of them. The student returns to the notes to organize, to edit, to emphasize important ideas, to add missing information, to clarify, to delete extraneous information, and perhaps to color-code or highlight. During this stage, the student may revisit the notes multiple times for different purposes, and one of those visits may include “chunking” the notes, dividing them into logical segments or sections based on content and organization. 4. Questioning: Students create thoughtful questions about each chunk of their notes that require them to process information at a higher level. Depending on the student’s mastery of the topic, the questions may target points of confusion or gaps in understanding, or they may take the students into deeper levels of inquiry about the topic of the notes. AVID suggests using Costa’s Levels of Thinking to guide the creation of Level 2 and 3 questions for the notes. Students can spend time collaborating with classmates or study groups to explore the questions they pose.  5. Summarizing:  The final stage asks students to create succinct summaries of the notes, which requires them to sift out the the most important information from the notes to arrive at an understanding of the big picture. Most of the time, the summary will answer the essential question they have written at the top of their notes and will include some information from each chunk of the notes.   

  

The steps listed are a part of effective studying regardless of the type of notes a student takes. Because of the way they are set up, Cornell Notes provide a ready-made template that facilitates this multi-stage approach to studying.

MisCornception #2: The best thing about Cornell Notes is that students can fold back the left column of the paper and use the sheet to study.  

The teacher who first introduced Cornell Notes to me was absolutely giddy at the idea that her students could fold back the left side of the page and--with the notes on one side of the paper and the questions on the other--quiz themselves about the content of the notes, flipping the page over to check for understanding as they studied. I remember thinking to myself, “If the students have Level 1 comprehension questions on the paper that are answerable in the notes themselves, wouldn’t it be more efficient and just as easy to make flashcards instead of Cornell Notes?”

What that teacher and I didn’t understand is the theory behind Cornell Notes. A German researcher named Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 found that our brain is highly adept at forgetting information. He developed a theory known as the Curve of Forgetting that showed that newly information disappears from our brains rapidly unless we do something to stop that from happening. The two main ways to thwart forgetting are to do something meaningful with the information and to revisit the information repeatedly. That’s what Cornell Notes are designed to do; they encourage students to create memorable, thoughtful notes of their own and then to interact with them multiple times as they revise, chunk, create questions, and summarize. The fold-the-flap Cornell Notes study method does address the repetition feature necessary for long-term remembering of information, but it ignores the rest of the procedure.    

MisCornception #3: Note-takers complete the question column and the notes section at the same time.

In order for the process above to work, students complete the notes on the right side, revise those notes, and THEN write questions. If these things happen simultaneously, there’s no chance for students to experience the repetition and variety of thinking processes necessary to make Cornell Notes work as a study tool.

MisCornception #4: The teacher needs to provide guiding questions for the left column.

If you do this, you are depriving your students of the chance to interact meaningfully with the content on their own. I’ve seen teachers who ignore the question part of the notes completely, and instead tell their students the topic heading to write in that space in the left column. The result is a nicely organized page of notes that does not prompt students to do any further thinking. This keeps the learning firmly grounded in the lower levels of Costa’s or Bloom’s. A better approach is to include these subject headings within the notes themselves on the right side of the page. Or, if you love the idea of headings floating out to the side, add an additional column for the headings, and make your Cornell Notes three-column notes that still allow students to follow up the note-taking with questioning.   

MisCornception #5: The answers to the questions on the left side of the page should be answered in the notes on the right side.

The goal of the questions is to push students to think at higher levels about the content: to compare and contrast, to make inferences, to evaluate, to predict, to draw conclusions. If the questions are answered in the notes themselves, the learning is Costa’s Level 1. While this may be desirable for emerging learners struggling to grasp onto the concepts, it’s not ideal for most kids. Higher-level questions lead to higher-level thinking, higher-level engagement, and higher-level understanding.

MisCornception #6:  Cornell Notes restrict my students to one style of note-taking.

Not at all! There’s no one correct way or preferred method to take the notes on the right side of the page. Some students like formal outlines while others prefer bullet points or even mind maps with drawings. Hand-drawn or pasted-in diagrams and figures can appear in the notes, too. Some pre-printed versions of Cornell Notes have lines to write on in the note-taking area; others are unlined for students whose notes are less linear. The type of notes is not what’s important in Cornell Notes; what you do with the notes is what matters.

MisCornception #7:  Cornell Notes are the panacea for all my students’ study issues.

Simply using the format of Cornell Notes is not going to turn your students into scholars overnight. Teaching and modeling how to take notes effectively, how to revise the notes with meaning in mind, how to write worthwhile questions, how to compose a clear and precise summary, and how to use the notes as a study tool will nudge your students in the right direction. As they continue to practice and refine the process, you and your students will see results.  

MisCornception #8: The important things about the notes are their appearance and how many pages of notes the students take.

Pretty notes are useless notes. And more is not always better. To engage in the Focused Note-taking Process, students are going to mess up their notes by crossing out, circling, underlining, adding new ideas, and inserting sketches and symbols. The result may look a little sloppy. Not every student will take the same number of notes, either. Some students will need to be continually prompted and encouraged to write more, yet others will succumb to the perfectionist method of writing everything down and leaving nothing out. If you must take a grade on the notes, grade the evidence of learning rather than the number of notes or pages.

If I’ve done my job here, I’ve convinced at least a few of you haters that Cornell Notes deserve a second chance. They’re not just some cultish AVID thing; they’re a format to help your students develop research-tested habits for effective learning and studying. They’re versatile, interactive, brain-based, and less painful than you initially imagined.

It's Never Too Early

It’s Never Too Early

or

What to Think About While You Are Actively Monitoring

It’s likely that at some point in the next few days or weeks you will have several hours during which you are contractually obligated to monitor students while they are undergoing their state-mandated testing. You’re not permitted to be on the computer or your phone; to read; to grade papers; to look at the students’ tests; to write anything; to talk; to listen to music on your headphones; to eat a noisy, stinky, or nut-laden snack; to stand still; to sit for long periods of time; to sneeze; to sigh audibly; to laugh (maniacally or otherwise); to hover over a student long enough to make him or her nervous, to sing; to hum; to line dance; to juggle; to yodel; to take the test yourself; to snap photos; to work a jigsaw puzzle; or to arrange flowers. You get to walk around and think silently and unobtrusively for four or more hours.

What will fill your thoughts during this time? Some of my friends like to complete math problems in their heads. A few compile statistics about their test takers, mentally calculating the percentages by gender, hair style, clothing choice, handedness, etc. Others spend time memorizing the names and ID numbers of the students testing in their rooms. Still others fantasize about what they’d do if they had to opportunity to meet the person who created this standardized test or the legislator who mandated that it be taken.

I have another suggestion.

It’s never too early to start thinking about beginning the next school year. In fact, right now--during this second horrible round of standardized testing--is the perfect time to fill your idle mind with visionary thoughts about what next August can look like.

As you are actively monitoring, think about how you feel about the year-in-progress. What has gone well? What could improve? What is driving you crazy?

Perhaps there’s a new initiative you’d like to try out and have been waiting for the perfect time to do so. Want to redo the way you’ve been starting or ending class? Have you recently become intrigued by the concept of Interactive Notebooks? Maybe you’re an English teacher who wants to launch a full-scale Reader’s or Writer’s Workshop. Or you’ve wanted to be more intentional about incorporating AVID WICOR strategies to engage your students.

By this time in the year, you can clearly see what your beginning-of-school preparations have spawned. Ideally, your students are still enthusiastic, engaged, on-task, risk-taking, controllable, and eager to learn (with just a touch of unavoidable “summeritis”). You might, unfortunately, struggle daily with students who are cantankerous, unruly, discouraged, distracted, and disengaged.       

One of the great things about teaching is that most teachers get a “do over” each year. You greet a new set of students who enter your classroom (and maybe your school) for the first time. The students are full of excitement and apprehension, and you have the opportunity to set precedents, to let them know how things run in your classroom, and to clarify your expectations. Students are malleable and trainable at the beginning of the year. Effective training, like most complex tasks, requires careful prior planning. That’s why it’s never too early to get started.  

Don’t wait until the last days before school starts to try to remember what you wanted to do differently this time around. Spend some time now making your to-do list for beginning next year. Please don’t spend your entire summer vacation planning and plotting for next year; you need and deserve plenty of downtime. But having the pre-made list at the ready will allow your mind to focus quickly on the ideas when August hits and it’s time to ramp up for another school year.

Right now, when you’ve got nothing to do but monitor your students, is the best time I can think of to start composing your mental list. You may even have the time to troubleshoot a few of the problems and work out the kinks in advance.

If you don’t want to think about next year, you can always start thinking about what to buy me for my birthday. It’s only 140 days away, and I’m allegedly difficult to shop for. It’s never too early to start planning.