Category Archives: Reflections

The Problem with Rewards & Praise

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I don’t give rewards. There are no shiny stickers on my students’ work, no stars next to their names, no charts with smiley faces and the only shiny pencils they get from me say “Happy Birthday!”.

As a child, I had absolutely no problem with rewards – I remember that they begot a silly sort of fun feeling, and also a sense that someone else thought I was doing a good job. Quite truthfully, the approval felt good. Except when I didn’t put much effort into something that was easy for me – then they were just stickers. Pretty, colorful, fun, yes, but stickers nonetheless. And I felt like a fraud, like I couldn’t tell them that I hadn’t worked as hard as they seemed to think I had. I was one of those “pleasers” and it was always about what someone else thought of my work, or how well my teacher thought I’d practiced the piano that week.

But every now and then (though truthfully not very often) a teacher or adult would ask me what I thought of my own work. Being used to teacher-referencing my judgment (if my teacher gave me a sticker, I could say I’d done a good job) I was clueless when someone asked me for my own opinion first. I hadn’t learned to reflect.

As a teacher, right from the start, rewards felt cheap. First of all, it was hard to decide what to reward – performance, or growth – or both? Then there was the idea of all that hard work being validated… by a sticker? Cheap, cheap, cheap! Then there was the idea of the smiley faces on the chart – too much to keep track of! I fell into what felt natural – giving kids comments on their work.

What kinds of comments are helpful? This was the topic of a lively and thought-provoking #elemchat discussion yesterday: From Praise to Feedback: How and Why? Praise is one of those terms that are difficult to define. Discerning the difference between praise, positive feedback, and encouragement was a bit of a challenge. #elemchat team member Joan Young (@flourishingkids) helped us with this clarification: praise is the kind of comment that highlights the student’s qualities, whereas feedback targets process and work.

Feedback is helpful to students when it is descriptive, timely, helps the student understand the task goals, and what s/he can improve upon. As Dylan Williams explains, we want to give students feedback that makes them think, instead of feedback that makes them “feel” (praise). (thanks to @whatedsaid for the link)

What’s the problem with praise? It is judgmental, based on the teacher’s values. When you praise a child, you say “I think you’re great!” – the opposite of which is: (you fill in the blanks). Praise-dependent and reward-dependent children are less likely to take risks and challenge themselves because they are either afraid of failure (afraid of losing your approval) or because there is nothing in it for them. Beyond academics, praise-dependent, reward-dependent children are less likely to take a stand against injustice because either there is nothing in it for them (reward) or they are afraid of losing that external approval of others.  (Barbara Coloroso on bullying).

We want to help students develop into caring, compassionate people who will think for themselves and do the right thing. Children need feedback, encouragement and deep caring. Not stickers, smiley faces and shiny pencils.

Test failure

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I owe this blog post to fellow #elemchat moderator/educator extraordinaire Pernille Ripp, whose blog is one I never miss. She is one of those gifted writers who magically and beautifully puts into words ideas that I often share, though her version is usually much more eloquent than mine. Her blog posts never fail to provide food for thought, and I come away from her blog with a feeling of inspiration and with every read, a slightly clearer vision/philosophy of education.

One of the areas where I believe Pernille and I definitely see eye-to-eye is that of testing and grades. A recent post of hers inspired the following comment (sorry about the long comment, Pernille!) which I thought I’d also share here. See, that’s the kind of educator Pernille is – one who inspires me to act, and to reflect on how to be a better teacher. So, thank you, Pernille, and, for better or worse, here are a few thoughts about testing.

I have the luxury of working in an environment where numerical grades are not used, and I am able to limit the number of tests and quizzes to a bare minimum. Students and teachers use rubrics and – (get ready for this) – ongoing dialogue – conversations (what a concept!) to discuss progress and growth with students. That said, every year, twice a year, standardized tests waltz in and upset this equilibrium. We do 1 writing test (ERB) and 1 Reading/Writing/Math test (Terra Nova).

Standardized tests have always perplexed me. Particularly in a setting like ours, where more that 70% of our students are not American… When students are given a writing prompt asking them to describe a visit to a pet shelter – and most of them have never even seen the inside of a pet shelter, there is little to do but smile weakly and say “Do your best – your results will not change what I already know about your abilities” (though, to be frank, it can be quite amusing to read stories about pet shelters housing llamas, chickens and venomous snakes!). I tell them that it is our school program that is being evaluated first and foremost, and I do what I can to make the day as fun and lighthearted as possible – we play silly games to silly music during breaks, all the while my heart is silently apologizing to them over and over for the ordeal I am putting them through. And, because they are fantastic kids, better people than most, they put their game face on and give it their honest best. Standardized test time is the only time of the year when I feel like a fraud, when my actions run counter current to my philosophy. It is the only time when I cannot be completely genuine with my students, and tell them how I really feel.

This year, I am toying with the idea of reading aloud a book I only recently discovered (don’t know how it escaped my attention) called The Report Card, by Andrew Clements. This is a book that tells the story of a gifted student, Nora, who exposes some of the myriad shortcomings and negative effects of tests by purposefully doing poorly and sending the adults – parents, teachers, administrators and counselors all a-tizzy. It is only when they stop looking at the data, and begin a true conversation with Nora that they really discover what an extraordinary child she is.

It’s time to drop the charade. If schools are to prepare kids for real life, it’s time we stop subjecting our students to contrived measures that may or may not be commensurate with what they’ve learned, may or may not be formulated in ways that allow students to express themselves in modes that suit their learning and expressive styles, and certainly will not tell me, as a teacher, anything I don’t already know about how best to help each child move forward. Like the librarian in The Report Card, it’s time to be honest with myself and the students about how I feel about the tests they are required to take, and help them, like Nora, make the best of it and get on with the “real” stuff.

21st Century Wake Up Call

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I recently had the privilege of attending the ASCD conference in Boston. It was, by far, the greatest conference I’d ever attended. The calibre of the speakers was phenomenal.

The first workshop I attended was facilitated by the incomparable Heidi Hayes Jacobs. The title of the session was 21st Century Essential Curriculum. Anyone who has ever attended a session with Heidi Hayes Jacobs knows that she has a unique, gripping style. One which, personally, I found absolutely mesmerizing.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs, known for her work on Curriculum Mapping, executive director of the Curriculum Mapping Institute (if you have not yet become a member of the Curriculum 21 Ning, I strongly urge you to put it on your list, waaayy up high on the priority list) is someone who does not only encourage 21st Century teaching/learning, she demands it.  “10% of the 21st Century is over. We aren’t preparing for the 21st century, we are in it. Children are processing information differently.” She encouraged demanded that educators keep current by means such as developing a PLN. When we consider what we want students to know and be able to do? “We are restricted by what WE know and are able to do.” Jacobs asked the audience to consider that the rate of change is such that students who are graduating today have a very different skill set than those who are currently in PreKindergarten. This struck a personal chord with me. Essentially, when I think about what my preschool son will be like in the future, I cannot look at this year’s graduates as an indicator. We truly need to be preparing students for a world that does not yet exist – and yet, as Jacobs pointed out, more often than not, schools are preparing kids for the 1990′s. Are our kids time traveling every time they come to school?

Furthermore, educators need to rethink the teaching and learning dynamics. As Jacobs pointed out, new kinds of students require new kinds of classrooms – as such, we must redefine the roles each of us plays. First and foremost, students must own their learning. When we look at the standards and benchmarks, the word “independently” should be the adverb at the end of each standard. Students need to become literate in new ways. New literacies support traditional literacies. They are:

  • Digital literacy (actively and strategically selecting tools for learning)
  • Media literacy (both the production of, and response to, media)
  • Global literacy (linking places, and people, and studying topics with respect to how they relate to the world)

Not only do we need to rethink what we teach, but also how we teach, and how we assess. Jacobs provided a plethora of options, including, but not limited to, asking science students to write a grant proposal, or create an app rather than the traditional science report. The Curriculum 21 Ning has a resource section that is positively bursting with resources. Furthermore, if you have not yet read Curriculum 21, it is a must-read!

Though much more was said and it is impossible to do justice to such an educator as Heidi Hayes Jacobs in a single blog post,  she did ask attendees to reflect on the content of the following video

The Finland Phenomenon

What’s most powerful for me in this video is the message that, essentially, we need to quit administrating education to students. Education is no longer something we do to kids. We need to set up environments where the teacher can get out of the way of learning, become a facilitator and coach students as they learn the skills, ideas, and adopt the dispositions that will serve them later on.

I think part of what captivates me in Heidi Hayes Jacobs is the fact that there are no more excuses. It is no longer acceptable for teachers to continue to teach “the way they’ve always done it”, or to avoid making changes simply because they do not know how to do something. Just as we expect that students be active, lifelong learners, we educators, must be ourselves, active, lifelong learners.

For those of you who are as of yet unfamiliar with Heidi Hayes Jacobs, here is a treat!

TEDxNYED – Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Designing the Ideal Report Card

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Dear PLN,

Please help us design the ideal report card…

This year, our elementary school is looking at a most exciting project – redesigning our report card. With the help of our fantastic  consultant, (who specializes in math but is really a master at building consensus and empowering teachers to take initiative to create change), our goal is to create a standards-based report card that is effectively illustrates the profile of the learner at a given time. Whereas this seems like a most daunting task, it is also a very exciting one. As pedagogues, this is the start of a very stimulating professional dialogue. What’s even more fascinating in that our school information system is a home-grown program. That is, the person who created the program that currently helps us create and keep track of all information concerning students (enrollment, grade book for secondary students, health, report cards, curriculum mapping, etc) is sitting downstairs in the technology department! This provides us with the opportunity to design a report card with few, if any, format constraints! A blank slate!

So, what does the ideal report card look like? I’m hoping my treasured PLN can provide input on this question.  Though there are literally hundreds of different report card models available, I have yet to see one that really hits the nail on the head. I think the challenge is to strike the perfect balance – providing sufficient information to be useful without overwhelming the reader. What do you think a report card should look like? What are the non-negotiables (must have), the important elements (should have), and the helpful (nice-to-have) elements?

Questions to ponder:

Who is the report card for? Parents? Students? Students’ future schools? Teachers? School admin?

I think there are several possible answers to this question. The problem is that each of these stake holders potentially has very different needs. Parents need information about how their child is progressing. Hopefully, the report card can also provide them with information about how they can help their child move forward. Students need feedback (which they should already get, daily, in conversations with the teacher) and ideas for next steps in the “story of their learning”. Future schools need clear pictures of where a student’s strengths and challenges lie, so that they can provide the most appropriate services for him/her. Teachers need to spend time thinking carefully about each student, where s/he is at the time, where s/he needs to go, and how the teacher can help guide forward progress.

Should there be many indicators, or fewer indicators and more anecdotal information?

Personally, I am very inclined towards anecdotal information – I write a page per student (8pt font!) every trimester. I feel that grades for indicators are not unlike some carrot and stick approaches some forward-thinking reform-oriented educators are trying to set aside. Though students in our school do not receive number grades (percentages) nor letter grades (A,B,C,D),  but instead indicators are rated on a scale, I feel that in essence, these two approaches are not fundamentally very different.

C = Area of Concern
S = Needs Support to Meet Expectations
I = Meets expecations
E = Exceeds expectations

As a parent, I would like to know much more than “Comprehends when reading”. I would prefer to know what kinds of strategies my child has tried, where he has succeeded, and where challenges still lie so that I can help him move forward – this is something that only an anectodal comment can best describe. So, as I teacher, I try to provide the very information about students that I hope to read about own child. Yes, long anecdotal comments take forever to write (no release time for report card writing!) but to me, it is an opportunity to reflect on each student’s development, and consider what I can do to best serve that student’s needs. That said, though some teachers, like me, write long anecdotal comments,  others, barely write three lines. So when were are considering report card design, how can we ensure that anecdotal comments are substantial enough to provide useful information?

Should indicators be specific or general?

Here, I think the trade off is quantity. More specific indicators can provide a very detailed profile of a student at a given time, but can also be overwhelming. Fewer general comments may be easier to read, but don’t provide the same depth of information. In my opinion, specific indicators not only provide detailed information, they may also help students (with the help of parents and teachers) formulate learning goals. Of course, as a parent, I love getting as much information about my child as possible, but I’m conscious of the fact that I’m an educator and that not all parents may feel this way. One route that our school is considering is to reword standards and benchmarks so that they are “parent-friendly” (less educational jargon).

Same indicators for whole school year, or different report cards every trimester?

Another consideration we are grappling with is whether or not to have the same list of indicators on all three report cards (i.e. everything on all report cards) or to have a different report card each trimester. Though some say that having the same report card with 3 columns (one for each trimester) allows parents to see progress throughout the year, some would argue that expectations change for each trimester and thus comparing the grades for different trimesters on a given indicator may not be a fair comparison. For example, a student who earned an “I” (meets expecations independently) one trimester may get an “S” (needs support to meet expectations) the next trimester, because the expectations change from one trimester to the next.

Theoretically, trimester-specific report cards would give teachers the possibility of selecting the specific benchmarks (reworded) that were targeted and assessed for a specific trimester, and assign them to the report card template for a specific trimester. Not only would it be an opportunity for teachers to reflect on how each child is doing, it would also serve the double purpose of requiring teachers to reflect on the benchmarks they have targeted and those they may need to place more focus on in the future.

Redesigning a report card is a process that we went through at my last school, though I moved long before the process was complete. Though a great deal was learned about assessment, and the pedagogical conversations were stimulating, the end result, a collection of rubrics, was unwieldy and inefficient.

However, I will say that one of the things I do miss from my last school is the fact that we had a full ped day for report card writing for every trimester. I would spread my students’ work around me using all the tables in the classroom, and spend the day observing, reflecting, and synthesizing. In my current school, we are given wonderful amounts of time for planning and collaboration, but no time is given for looking assessment, evaluation and, the main function of report cards, communication. The report card is an official document that is very telling of a school’s approach and philosophy. In designing a report card, the utmost care must be taken in taking into account all considerations.

So…

If you were to design the ideal report card, what would it look like?

Breaking walls, feeding passion

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I went to school today. Does that sound strange? I guess it’s not what most teachers are doing in mid-July… Don’t get me wrong, we did make it to the beach later in the afternoon, but after yesterday’s #elemchat, I just felt like I needed to reconnect with my classroom. There were so many new and renewed ideas swimming around in my head, I just had to release them in the space where they will hopefully grow and flourish.

The #elemchat topic was Differentiation: What models, strategies, techniques and tools to deliver “just right” instruction? When the #elemchat community voted for this particular subject, I was elated. Differentiation is something that I have done to some extent but am hoping to be doing more of, in a more methodical and systematic way. That said, I must admit that I was really glad that the moderation of #elemchat is a team effort, as I am certainly no expert in that domain. Without exaggeration, the #elemchat team is the best possible team ever. Dynamic and forward-thinking yet modest to a fault, they have won my utmost respect and admiration in the very short time we’ve known each other. Nancy spearheaded the moderation of this particular topic, preparing a list of thought-provoking questions that only an educator with plenty of experience with differentiation could have come up with.

The chat was the coming together of educators who are dedicated to providing the best possible experiences and opportunities for students. The excitement stayed with me long after the chat was over. I look forward to helping to work on the summary (thank you for the head start Dorie!) as a way to revisit the wealth of ideas and resources shared and reflect on how I can improve my practice to, as Louise put it, “deliver ‘just right’ learning for students”.

It’s remarkable how quickly and profoundly Twitter has made a difference in my professional life. Through it, I have discovered a community of educators who share a steady stream of high calibre resources and ideas. For me, the most exceptional quality of building a PLN and using Twitter has been the tone – consistently positive and constructive, it shines in stark contrast to the negative venting and complaining that often takes place in staff rooms. I once read somewhere (can’t remember where, though would love to credit) that Facebook is for connecting with people you went to school with, whereas Twitter is for connecting with people you wish you’d gone to school with. Though I have the immense privilege of working on a beautiful campus with a great staff, I am also grateful to be breaking down walls to, as Eddie put it, “learn alongside” my PLN. I love teaching, and I love learning – it’s what I do, it’s who I am… and my PLN feeds that passion. Thank you.

As I walked through the magnificent campus that I call my “work place”, I met up with some colleagues who were on their way to the pool. When they asked me what I’ve been doing this summer, I found myself relating my experiences with recent Twitter chats (#elemchat, but also #mathchat and #scichat) with a degree of animation and enthusiasm that startled even me. One person even said to me “Wow, I’d like to be a fifth grader next year!” Then, to top it off, I walked into my classroom and found beautiful, new furniture (pictures to come!) tables, book display unit… Magnificent! So… how many days until we start? My heart is thumping with eager anticipation. Thank you, #elemchat team, community and PLN for being there when walls were broken and for fueling the fire that powers my teaching.