Student Relationship to Schooling

Dear Mom, 

Let's be honest, no judgement or anger, you are the most overbearing mom I know. Before you say the generic sentence, “It’s coming out of a place of love,” I need everyone to understand something. I get good grades, am never out past curfew, and apply myself in everything I do. With these statements in mind let's think about your actions….Life 360 on my phone at all times, my room has to be pristine, and I can’t complain about anything. Ever. 

Maybe these problems seem unimportant to you, but I can't take it anymore. Anything I do isn't good enough, either it’s not done or it’s not done well enough. From a parent perspective I understand your unconditional love and want for me to be safe, but it is exhausting to get yelled at everyday for nothing. Your tantrums around insignificant issues ruin my day and I am old enough to be able to inform you without a terrible response. 

By now, you are probably furious and, hopefully, giving you at least one example will help, so here you go. Just two days ago I called you on the phone, in a high-stress situation. There was a gate, which would not open, in front of me and a vehicle behind as I tried to enter the parking garage. The clicker, usually in the glove compartment, which opens the gate was nowhere to be found. I called to ask for advice on where the clicker was and how to get out of the situation. I was in a difficult spot with little driving experience. Do you know what your response was? “Why are you yelling at me? I am so sick of you yelling.” For one, I was not yelling, and two, if you were in that circumstance you would have broken my phone with your volume levels. You scream all day, but I can’t raise my voice when my car is entrapped, I’m getting honked at, and you aren’t telling me where the clicker is. 

Mom, I love you but it’s too much, please think before you shout. It gets nothing done and cripples my emotions. As a young adult I feel it is time to voice my opinions without backlash. Please, stop acting like the world will end when I forget my keys or there is one item of clothing on my floor. Love, your daughter "Student" 

Audience- Teens with overbearing parents. 

Purpose- For teens to be inspired and confident enough to speak up for themselves against their parents. Creativity: I made a few choices creativity to help achieve my purpose of teens to speak up for themselves. I used the letter format to help the teens reading that they are not alone and everyone at some point goes through overbearing parents. This helps develop the reader's confidence to take to their parents. I also used an almost aggressive and aggravated tone throughout to show my frustration and to hopefully resonate with the readers as well. I also picked a topic that resonates with me and I feel very strongly about which I think helps the reader feel empowered.

(my response to teacher)

That's a pretty telling piece of writing.  It's not surprising at all.  The relationship of Student to schooling is so fraught and weighted.  If she doesn't get an A she feels like a failure.  and, according to her mom, she has earned ONLY As since pre-K.  So, what happens when she doesn't get the A?  It's a shock to her self-conception, one that has been publicly flaunted (likely) by her mom.  This is such an HC story.  I feel empathy for Student (and her mom).  They are both stuck in these narratives about grades/college/success.  In my own role, I feel like I still need to take some steps in getting better... which means talking to her teacher, working through the thing that tells her to reject "unwanted challenge" to her self conception..... and might help her become more resilient.

Developing close connections with kids - care, challenge, support, etc.

 Developmental Relationships Framework by The Search Institute

(from Marshall Memo #873)

The Minneapolis-based Search Institute created the Developmental Relationships Framework aimed at fostering “close connections through which young people discover who they are, cultivate abilities to shape their own lives, and learn how to engage with and contribute to the world around them.” The Framework has five elements, each with specific actions that make relationships powerful (quoted directly):

• Express care: Show me that I matter to you:

• Be someone I can trust.

• Really pay attention when we are together.

• Make me feel known and valued.

• Show me you enjoy being with me.

• Praise me for my efforts and achievements.

• Challenge growth: Push me to keep getting better:

• Expect me to live up to my potential.

• Push me to go further.

• Insist I take responsibility for my actions.

• Help me learn from mistakes and setbacks.

• Provide support: Help me complete tasks and achieve goals:

• Guide me through hard situations and systems.

• Build my confidence and take charge of my life.

• Stand up for me when I need it.

• Put limits in place that keep me on track.

• Share power: Treat me with respect and give me a say:

• Take me seriously and treat me fairly.

• Involve me in decisions that affect me.

• Work with me to solve problems and reach goals.

• Create opportunities for me to take action and lead.

• Expand possibilities: Connect me with people and places that broaden my world:

• Inspire me to see possibilities for my future.

• Expose me to new ideas, experiences, and places.

• Introduce me to people who can help me grow.

The Framework linked below has a checklist of specific actions that can be helpful during the pandemic.

“The Developmental Relationships Framework” from The Search Institute, 2018

Work From Home World

 (from Next Draft)

"In our always-on, always-connected world, it no longer makes sense to expect employees to work an eight-hour shift and do their jobs successfully. Whether you have a global team to manage across time zones, a project-based role that is busier or slower depending on the season, or simply have to balance personal and professional obligations throughout the day, workers need flexibility to be successful." And with that, Brent Hyder, Salesforce's chief people officer, made the work from home era a little more permanent. Salesforce declares the 9-to-5 workday dead, will let some employees work remotely from now on. "An immersive workspace is no longer limited to a desk in our Towers; the 9-to-5 workday is dead; and the employee experience is about more than ping-pong tables and snacks." (I'm not even sure the life experience is about more than that.)

+ Axios: "Salesforce said most employees will work from the office only one to three days a week, while some will work fully remotely. It now foresees that only the smallest share of its workforce will come to an office each day." (For me, it's less about getting back to an office and more about getting the hell out of the house.)

Mastery checker

The Problem with "Best Practice"

 Article: "Best Practice - the Enemy of Beteter Teaching" Link

1. "Best practices" can encourage a plug-and-play approach. Teachers are encouraged to adopt new methods and use them as often as possible, but they're often given few opportunities to analyze or develop a better understanding of those methods. For example, textbook publishers, professional development providers, and math specialists have been pushing greater use of conceptually rich mathematical problems. "Rich problems" or "concept tasks" have received the best practice label on the basis, in part, of the mistaken conclusion that higher-achieving countries teach a greater number of rich problems than the United States does.

2. "Best practices" can uncouple learning goals from instructional methods. The seven countries involved in the TIMSS used different teaching methods because they valued different learning goals. This finding reveals a principle worth highlighting: Good teaching must always be associated with a welldefined learning goal. A good teaching method for one learning goal might not be effective for another. Without specifying learning goals, there's no way to sort out which teaching methods are better than others. Suppose the goal for 10th graders taking second-year algebra is high performance on a unit test that contains a number of mathematical procedures that students must execute correctly. Research has shown that a good way to prepare students for recalling facts or procedures is repeated, error-free practice with immediate feedback. But suppose the learning goal for these same 10th graders is not just to perform well on the unit test, but to remember these procedures for the rest of the year and be able to modify them to solve slightly different problems that will come up in the future. Research has shown that this kind of learning goal is better achieved if students are required to exert some intellectual effort in making sense of the procedures, perhaps wrestling with the question of why the procedures work

3. "Best practices" focus on activity instead of achievement. In many school contexts, the idea of sharing best practices represents a search for ways to keep the classroom environment lively and stimulating. In this context, best is sometimes labeled fresh, innovative, or high interest. Although there's nothing wrong with employing high-interest activities, it's counterproductive to make them a focal point and primary objective of instruction rather than a means of fostering student learning of specific content and skills. Ends can be confused with means; activities can be substituted for achievement. Introducing new technologies is a prime example. Thousands of districts and schools have adopted one-to-one initiatives with new laptops or mobile devices and introduced interactive whiteboards, assessment clickers, and software applications, all of which are potentially powerful tools. But without careful planning and training, these devices and resources can quickly become expensive and colorful accessories for existing instructional methods— and one more reason teachers may not be focused on continual improvement of instruction through planning, trying out, evaluating, and refining better practices. The same narrative describes popular best practices, such as problem-based learning, cooperative groups, or handson activities and manipulatives. Gravitating toward the latest and greatest ideas with hopes of keeping students on task, interested, and engaged is not a bad thing. These can be effective instructional approaches—for certain learning objectives. But that nuance often is ignored, so teachers don't receive the training or aren't given the time to learn how to leverage these new approaches to foster student learning and understanding. Evaluative observations of teaching—for high stakes or not—often mistake the mere presence of specific instructional practices as meaningful, rather than attending to whether students are learning something: Did the teacher use higher-order questioning in the lesson? Yes or no? How many times? It would be better to ask, When the teacher used higher-order questioning, did it create a powerful learning opportunity? Perhaps an even more important question is this: Was the lesson planned and executed so students had challenging learning opportunities that higherorder questioning enabled?  

Improving Individual Student Reading Conferences

 (from MM 826 - March 2, 2020)

Ideas for Individual Student Reading Conferences

            “My favorite moments with my students happen one-on-one,” says Arkansas teacher Justin Minkel on this article in Education Week Teacher. To make the most of reading conferences, he suggests the following:

            • Prioritize quality over quantity. Trying to rush through the entire class each week is a mistake, says Minkel. His routine is doing two or three conferences a day, so some students are seen every other week.

            • Read with struggling readers more often. “Being equitable with our time doesn’t mean allotting it identically to each student,” he says. Minkel’s emergent readers have conferences almost every day.

            • Begin with a compliment. Reading aloud is a “vulnerable process for many children,” he says. “They tend to be more receptive to feedback on their reading abilities if we begin that feedback with one or two of their strengths.”

            • Have the student try out a new skill on the spot. “Sometimes, even when they’re eagerly nodding their heads, our students have no idea how to go off and do what we just told them to do,” he says. “It’s not enough to teach. We have to make sure the kids learn.”

            • Check for comprehension. Some students can read with 100 percent accuracy but not understand what they just read. Simple, low-key questions – What happened in this story? What did you learn from this book? – tell whether the student is doing the “critical, invisible work of reading – visualizing, connecting, inferring, predicting,” says Minkel. This is especially important for English learners, and for all students it builds the bridge from thinking to talking and then to writing.

            • Immediately put observations to work. Reading conferences give teachers invaluable information about each student’s fluency, comprehension, and strategies for figuring out tricky words, and it’s a shame if the data wind up in a manila folder and aren’t used. Minkel believes in applying insights on the spot – grabbing a whiteboard and helping a student see how to turn the word moon into main and mean, or asking, What happened so far? “The time we spend gathering data is only useful if we actually use the data to make kids better readers,” he says.

            • Teach the reader, not just the reading. Minkel suggests using one-on-one time with students to check in with them on the bigger picture: How’s our class going for you? Any problems? How’s your baby sister doing? “Taking that half-minute to ask how students are doing can convey that we care about them as human beings, not just as a collection of reading levels and test scores,” he says. “Over time, these little human moments can strengthen, reinforce, or repair the relationship at the heart of teaching.”

 

“Six Tips for Making the Most of One-on-One Reading Conferences” by Justin Minkel in Education Week Teacher, February 25, 2020, https://bit.ly/2PCU2FO

Ask These Questions to Foster an Employee’s Sense of Purpose

 From HBR newsletter:  I'm thinking they're good for summative evaluation.

"We all want to find meaning in what we do. As a manager, you can help your team members foster this inner sense of purpose by asking them a few simple questions:

• What are you good at? What do you take on because you believe you’re the best person to do it? What have you gotten noticed for throughout your career? The idea here is to help people identify their strengths.
• What do you enjoy? In a typical workweek, what do you look forward to doing? These questions help people find or rediscover what they love about work.
• What feels most useful? Which work outcomes make you proudest? Which of your tasks are most critical to the team or organization? The answers can highlight the inherent value of certain work.
• What creates a sense of forward momentum? How is your work today getting you closer to what you want? The point here is to show people how their current role helps them advance toward future goals.

It’s not always easy to guide others toward purpose, but these questions can help.