Brains, Buddies, and Education

Is Neuroscience A Key to Successful Teaching?

In short, I think the answer is yes, but let's take a closer look at things:

1. Neuroscience is "a branch (as neurophysiology) of the life sciences that deals with the anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, or molecular biology of nerves and nervous tissue and especially with their relation to behaviour and learning" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neuroscience, March 2016).

Educators are not experts in this field, though our job is to teach; teaching specifically deals with how the brain interacts with knowledge and ideas (or how it learns). Therefore, it is arguable that educators should be looking to neuroscience to develop their practice. The good news here is that educational neuroscience is a growing field of study that many teachers and administrators are beginning to delve into. However, I do think we need to be careful here as neuroscience itself is a complicated, diverse, and emerging area of study (I see simlarities between this and how gene theory has evolved from single genes controlling aspects of life to a more epigenetic view of things).

Though I am new in this area, and definitely not well versed, I am starting to delve into this field of study and what I am finding is incredible.

Non-Uniformity in Learning

For example, one of the findings from recent neuroscience that I believe can directly impact education is the basis for how the brain learns. For example, it has long been thought that all eight year olds should be able to learn the same things at the same time: in fact, this is what our education system is based on (grades directly proportional to age and the pass / fail model associated to each grade or course). However, it is just as well known by anyone who teaches that this belief that all children of a similar age can learn the same things in the same time frame is not the case. Pick any classroom at any grade level and you will probably see a bell curve of learning in any discipline (arithmetic, literature, social skill, etc.). In fact, neuroscientist have long known that learning across disciplines is not uniform (https://www.gse.harvard.edu/~ddl/articlesCopy/FischerDaley_ExecProcesses2006.pdf) and that the view that knowledge can be seen as a step by step process up a ladder is not realistically how our brain works. A more accurate view is that learning is not uniform, but instead dynamic; it is not steps up a ladder, but a intertwined creation of a web. This is true both across disciplines and within them. 

Social Brains

Secondly, as Louis Cozolino writes in his book The Social Neuroscience of Education, our brains "learn in a naturalistic setting in the context of meaningful group and interpersonal interactions". This harkens back to Harlow's Monkey experiments from the mid 1900's; however, Cozolino further argues that social attachment is not important just for our mental well-being or physical health, but also for our learning. In other words, if educators do not make caring connections with their students, the students will not reach their academic potentials. 

Take Away

In essence, even these two simple ideas can radically change the way a school runs and the way education can take place. First, schools must understand that grade specific tasks and knowledge is not realistic. I will admit, however, that the push in education right now does address this issue as more and more schools are working on more student-centred and individualized approaches to assessment, but there is much more work to be done and many more educational walls to tear down; for example, do we need grades at all? Can schools begin to use cross-grade rubrics with more long term projects and accomplishments or benchmarks? I believe they can, but it would radically change the way schools run and what our graduation terms look like. With respect to the second topic, that of the social aspect of learning, schools need to foster teacher-student relationships. This cannot be done in a classroom climate that is lecture based (when would the teacher really get to know the child other than through the hand-in assessments). Instead, administrators and schools must build into the school day the opportunity for teachers to interact with students on a more one-to-one basis. This can easily be done with a more mentor-based system that allows for teachers to move through the student body while they work. Project-based models work well for this, especially if they are cross grade and cross curricular.

Doing this does take planning and a different focus, but if we are going to see education really work for our students, then it is a change in focus that needs to happen.

Designing a 21st Century School

Let's take stock of where many of us are at right now in Canada: new government, new jobs, new immigrants, and for the education system, new curriculum. Right now, every school in BC is looking at this path in front of them, paved with a push for 21st Century learning and innovative teaching practices, and everyone is wondering how best to proceed. In fact, I have already heard various and dichotic views on how to proceed. Some schools are frozen with fear ("What does this mean for us and how can we change our whole curriculum and teaching style?"), some are plowing ahead but without a solid plan ("Let's try and see what happens"), some are thinking that they should go the "other way" and become more traditional ("We can become that school that sticks with the three 'R''s that everyone knows is what education really means"), and some are thinking that this new curriculum is nothing more than a fad ("We've tried this before and it failed"). I am sure there are even more viewpoints than the ones above, but the point is clear: we are at a crossroads.

As a new school administrator, I am faced with the same question; what should we as a school do? The answer, in my eyes anyway, is clear: now is the time to take stock of where we were and plan for where we are wanting to be. In my thinking, this is the opportunity of a lifetime and we should grab it. It is 2016, and it is time that our educational system changes to better equip our students to move into the 21st Century.

Interestingly, working in an independent school system seems to afford me with arguably more freedom in how to implement this new curriculum (this comes from talking to other administrators around the area), but just as interestingly is the fact that, in my experience, private or independent schools tend to stick to themselves and, therefore, do not change a lot (this comes from experience). I need to be clear though, we not only need to be keeping up with the educational trends as other schools are doing, but we must be on the cutting edge - we must be beyond and better than public system schools. Why? Because, at least in BC independent schools, parents are paying tuition and, if I am not mistaken, that means they are expecting to get more (or at least a largely different) educational impact than they would at a public school.

The independent school I work at has made this decision: we are going to work towards becoming a forward thinking, 21st Century focused school that utilizes and creates its curriculum around cutting edge teaching strategies which are based on best practices and research. To do this, however, we need a plan, a framework, to make it happen successfully. For those readers interested in a good look at what 21 Century education is all about, I would encourage you to visit the P21 website.

From the admin perspective, I decided to incorporate a strategy called Appreciative Inquiry. In essence, we are going to follow the four processes of AI, those being Discover, Dream, Design, and Destiny. As a staff, we first got together and discovered what we are (the best of what was and is). This then becomes the core of our school (the centre area that makes us different and that grounds us as we move on from there). The key here is to make this core full of the positive aspects of what we are only - these are the things we want to keep.

AI Core with 4C's

Next, we came together and worked on the Dream stage (what can we become). To do this, we met during our last pro-d day and used the four C's of 21 Century learning as our headers and asked a simple question of each one: what would our school look like if we wanted to become the ultimate school for each of those four C's? The brainstorming was incredible, exciting, and created a new vision of what education at our school could look like. Staff came up with multi-grade, multi-subject teaching based on project based learning concepts, bigger learning areas, more student-driven input into their own curriculum choices, and a need for a global rubric / assessment program that will guide students, parents, and teachers through knowing where they are in their educational goals and achievements.

These are all very large brainstorming ideas to say the least, but they are needed. The next step will be to design a pathway and a framework to make the ideas that we are going to implement happen. My biggest concern right now is building changes: which classrooms and which areas will we need to change to make these dreams a reality? Also, can we get the right pro-d to aid our teachers in implement these changes correctly? As recently stated in a recent podcast with Andreas Schleicher, the Director for Education and Skills in Paris, there is no point putting 21st Century teaching or technology into a classroom run with 20th century teaching practices. 

Pro-D and Andragogy

Changing the Face of Professional Development

Every administrator wants to make their teachers better and every teacher has this same drive. In fact, one of the main aspects of being a professional is that developing yourself within that profession is expected; this idea of a life-long learner should be nowhere more apparent than in our educators. However, I believe as Edwards Demings mentioned, that "the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management" (Deming, W. Edwards. 1993. The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, second edition). In essence, it is arguable therefore that the following statement is true: the performance of our teachers is governed largely by the school administrative structure itself.

So what should administrators do to help our teachers to be successful? I believe that the best scenario would be to plan it in the same way as you would for classroom student success (however, I would not follow the same delivery system as a classroom would; more on this later). The framework that I have begun using is as follows:

1. Find out what the goal of the school / teachers is (end product)
2. Find out what's missing (what is not in place - this might take some poling of staff)
3. Put people and processes in place for discussion and pro-d around only those areas (specific)
4. Allow for teachers to choose which discussions / pro-d they take or allow for multiple ones to be taken in a day

The difference in comparison to the way Pro-D is done now in many districts and the way I am proposing it be done is mostly in the first step: deciding on an end product first. This is, in essence, backwards design. This year, following this process will be easy as we have a new curriculum to implement K-9; thus, the goal is already set: have teachers create their course outlines using the new curriculum ( I am adding that I would like this to be done before they go home for the summer - a daunting task actually). To do this, some things that are missing are 

• a close look at the new curriculum (something I started at our last Pro-D but will continue with special guests and other resources in the new year)
• a list of who will be teaching what
• some looking at teaching pedagogy that successfully implements the curriculum. 

As mentioned, one of the goals for successful implementation will be to find the right people to help my staff to implement the curriculum effectively. Once that is in place, you would think that it is done: that is not the case however, as successful delivery is also important.

I believe that the delivery system should not be lecture based, with the standard PowerPoint, speaker, teachers all listening to the same speech, high school or college-like lesson. The reason for this is in the fact that I do not believe that adults learn or should be taught in the same way as kids. Standard classroom teachers have all been taught to teach pedagogy (peda meaning kids; in fact, the Greek word
is paidagōgía which means office of a child's tutor). Sadly, however, many administrators and Pro-D speakers use this same teaching style with the teachers. Instead, what they should be doing is Andragogy, which is the study of how to teach adults. This term was first coined by Alexander Kapp, in 1833, but it fell into disuse for most of the 1900's. The biggest recent proponent of this style of study is Malcolm Knowles (1913 -1997). There are some issues with the original idea, and Knowles himself has adapted and changed his view, but the concept is in my opinion correct - many adults tend to learn differently than kids do.

There is a small caveat here however, and it is one that Knowles accepted: the split between adult and kid is not age related, but should instead by seen as a continuum. In a recent (1996) article by A. Hanson called "The search for separate theories of adult learning: does anyone really need andragogy?", he argues that the difference in learning is not related to the age and stage of one's life, but instead related to individual characteristics and the differences in "context, culture and power" within different educational settings. I would agree and add that the context in question is thus: educators. Thus, one could argue that they all share a context, a culture, and a power, and so a more andragogious style of teaching is needed, one that is appropriate to their profession and their quest to be lifelong learners. My exact plan will be to have the Pro-D days more collaborative, self-directed, and focused on the real life task to be solved.

Parent Participation in School: A Multidimensional Approach

The Importance of Open Two-Way Communication

(http://www.nojitter.com/post/225401504/unified-business-communication-framework)

Setting a standard, a framework, for how a corporation interacts with its own people or people outside of the company is vital. In fact, most of the problems I have dealt with the past month with my staff or clients are all due to either communication breakdowns (not having the right protocols in place) or policies and procedures that are missing. In fact, one might say that the majority of problems that our school dealt with this past month was caused by the organization itself.

However, solutions to problems such as this, though not always easy, are simple in their complexity: corporations must have open communication and a vision / framework in place for interactions between all stakeholders. Kristie Lorette, an MBA consultant, wrote that "Without good business communication, the internal and external structure of a business can face numerous challenges that can ultimately lead to its demise" (http://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-good-communication-business-1403.html, 11-02-2015). In a school, this means a more transparent and collaborative communication focus between staff, administration, and parents. But where do you begin to address this and how do you make sure that the two-way communication is productive? Though still in the early stages, here is one option: create a parent participation plan that addresses two-way communication from each participant (teacher - parent, parent - teacher, administration - parent, administration - teacher, etc.).

A great starting point is to first create a task force (committee) that will look a this issue. In my own school, I have added a new teacher, an experienced teacher, an administrative assistant, and a parent to this committee to garner representation from each participant. Secondly, you need a starting point, something that all members can be familiar with and glean ideas from; a good article that deals with this exact issue that can be used as a starting point can be found here.

I will post more on how this begins to take shape in my school, but I feel confident that this will address the idea of having open communication and a useful framework to move ahead from.

Life as a VP... How About Assistant Principal? Sure, why not.

One Month Down: First Thoughts, Leadership Styles, and International Students

My Principal recently mentioned to me that to be a good administrator a switch has to be hit in the mind that allows someone to not think simply as a teacher but instead to think in terms of the bigger picture. This sounds easy at first, but it requires some adjustment of key understandings. It is these understandings that I now feel are helping me to feel successful in my job this first month.

First, let me explain the change of name from VP to AP that you might have noticed in the title of this post (and yes, this is important): the rational for the change is due to the fact that the Principal that I am working with right now is temporary and not permanent. In fact, I am on my own for most of the month of October. This forces me to take on the full Principal role when he is not around (thus, being an Assistant seemed a better name to suit the position).

I have enjoyed it so far, to be honest. Let me thus share two things I have learned:

1. Organizational Skills are Key - Thank the Lord for technology and Google Calendars (and Docs, and Tasks Lists etc.). My first word of advice to anyone doing this job is to share calendars and documents with people who need them, write down tasks in an area that you can always see them (I have placed a large whiteboard in my office that I write tasks down on, brainstorm on, write myself notes on, etc.), and finally answer emails immediately and take care of them without putting them off for any period of time; I find that if I wait on answering them, they disappear off my radar and I can very easily forget them and the topic they pertained to (this is a great recipe for disaster and missed important decisions and will also reflect badly on the corporation and your own professionalism).
2. Be Flexible and Open - This might seem a bit simple in its initial view, but there is much more to it than simply changing your day to accommodate things as they come up; this is not what I am talking about. I am talking about leadership style. I have realized that I am most at home if I am a Transformational Leader (Liethwood, 1990) and not an Instructional or even Transactional leader. However, I realize that each one has its benefits and purposes and that to be a good leader I must figure out which one I need to be at which time. Thus, I will take some time to focus on this next.

Leadership Styles

A quick recap of the leadership styles is as follows: Instructional Leadership deals with managing curriculum and instruction. This is in my mind more of the classic Principal role with the following characteristics: top down approach, strong minded leadership, and charisma. Transactional Leadership is based more on dealing with the success of the company as an entity unto itself. The characteristics of this style of leadership is supervision, organization, and group performance with a rewards or punishment component. Transformational Leadership is based on vision and change. The characteristics of this style of leadership is inspiration, worker self motivation, and long term vision setting.

Yes, there are probably more sub-styles of the above three (and the Laissez-Faire style in my eyes is not an actual leadership style) but I feel that these three do cover the majority of leadership styles. I have learned that each style has its place and time, and that a good leader needs to know which one to use when. I also feel that most leaders will probably have a dominant style; mine tends to sit at the Transformational level.

On a day to day basis, I have also found that it is important for me to look at problems as nothing more than that: problems that can be solved if a correct solution is found. I tend to have a bit of a thin skin at times (something that is not necessarily good for a leader I am told); to counteract this, I wear a jacket. My jacket is simply a work jacket: it is tough and reflects debris. The jacket is a mindset: problems occur and so I work at finding the solution to best fix the problem. After work, I take the jacket off and go home. My background as a computer technician and network administrator helps me in this situation: I feel there is a logical solution to any problem and that all that needs to be done is to listen to the problem and all of the facets connected to it, then to brainstorm solutions that might fit, and then cooperatively create a plan to fix the problem. As well, once a solution is put in place, one must go back to make sure that the problem is actually solved and did not create other problems. In leadership, this looks as follows: be open to allowing people to talk, vent, and give their opinions; go to all parties involved and get the information needed; keep the communication lines open between them and share ideas; get feedback for those ideas from the parties involved; choose a plan that best fits and that everyone involved in has had input into; and finally allow for reassessing of the solution from all parties involved.

This has worked so far. Have all problems been resolved so far? Not necessarily, but the problems are not being put on the back-burners and I feel confident solutions will be found.

Specifics

Connected to what I have shared above, I also want to share a few specific things, day to day, that I am finding in my job. For this month's post, I want to focus on international students and how best to fit them into a school body. The answer is that I don't know yet (in case you thought I was going to post some fix-all silver bullet here). However, here is what I feel is needed and what I am planning to do.

I believe that having an international student body in a K-12 school is not only important but vital in our day and age. We live in a world that might not geographically have gotten smaller, but is communication-ally smaller. A majority of jobs deal with oversee transactions, Canada itself has numerous ethnic groupings and influences, language barriers are much easier to deal with than before (thank you Google Translate), and we can Skype or Hangout with people from almost anywhere in the world we like. Our students need to learn how this is changing the world and how best to deal with it. Therefore, it is imperative in my eyes that we have international students in our schools.

But the best integration of that is the question. For now, I have discovered that a screening process is vital: we must know these students before they come to our schools. That probably means having a liaison who is familiar with their culture (and maybe even fluent in their language) who goes and meet the families in their own communities, having entrance guidelines and performance levels in place that those students must meet (language aptitude tests, for example) before they are accepted into our schools, and having specific support in place once they arrive to meet their needs. Right now, we have skeletons of these in place in my school, but nothing extensive enough to see overall success. I have therefore decided to go on the hunt to find a place where this is being done well; my choice right now is our local University. I am planning to meet with the international students coordinator next week hopefully at our University, tell them what we have, ask for some ideas and support, and make some useful connections. 

I have learned this year that if this is not done right our teachers suffer; a slapped-together international student body that is added to our schools simply adds another component to our classrooms that is similar to adding a group of special needs students (but without the aids); the teachers attention is pulled in the direction of the internationals and therefore takes away from teaching the rest of the students. Yes, teaching is different than it was before and teachers must be flexible and adjust styles to their classrooms, but perhaps there is only so far a teacher will be able to bend and change before a breaking point occurs. This is a specific point that I think needs to be addressed: if students are here to graduate, do teachers simply view them as equal to other students and assess them at the same level? How much do we need to adjust? I have not found many international students who can communicate at a level high enough for the teacher to not notice that they are international (for example, are these students asked to write an English 12 essay with the same criteria as other English 12 students: same amount, same grammar, same word usage, etc.?). Thus, do we adapt our curriculum for them? How much is enough? Or, do we keep the standard high and give aid to them to help them to reach that level? Is it possible to do that and how could this be done effectively and not become a large financial burden on our school? 

This has been September. I look forward to the next month and the challenges and solutions to come. 

Life of a VP: Part 1

Full Time Assistant Principal - What's It Like and Where Are We Going?

The Purpose

What's it like to be the Vice Principal of a K-12 school? Well, as I have recently taken on this position, here is where I am going to post what it's like. 

First Thing I Did
I have been at this school for 18 years now but always in the role of a teacher (or computer network administrator). I kept my nose out of the administrative going-ons for two reasons: first, I was not a fan of the politics that I thought must go on in these positions and, secondly, I didn't want to deal with the apparent "garbage" that administration tended to get from staff, parents, and students. Yes, I had a very bleak view of this job. One thing that should be noted is that I am a big proponent of "truth" - hard facts. The biggest issue I have had with people over my 40-ish years on this earth is that people sometimes tend to speak and act on what they perceive as truth but they have not personally checked on the credibility of their beliefs. This, I believe, was where much of the politics and garbage I spoke of earlier was based on.

Thus I wanted to first look at the truth about our school in general. Many Principals have come and gone form our school and I wanted to see their impact. Thus, I went back to the beginnings of the school's inception and made a chart of the total number of students from each grade. I then totalled the numbers up and charted it. Here is what I found:

As you can see, our school enrolment is on the decline. Interestingly, the school started with a very large number of students at it's inception (over 500 at one point), but we have steadily shrunk. Another interesting point is that each of the up-swings in the chart correspond to the 2 and 3 years of new Principal at our school. 

I propose this: our school was started by many families who brought their families together. There was "Hype" to the school at the beginning (a new independent school). This trend follows the Hype cycle well (http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp). As well, for each principal, there seems to be a small upswing, something that could be attributed to a new leader's Halo effect http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/f/halo-effect.htm). However, as you will also notice, that effect does not last.

A side note here is that I still need to overlay this with standard demographic information of the public schools in our area: are we simply seeing a larger demographic trend? I think there is some of this, but I don't believe it is as closely related as I would hope it to be. Therefore, I will assume that there will be some correlation, but that the larger school demographics will not be the determining factor in our own school's numbers.

Conclusion?

What can we conclude from all this? I believe the following is what's playing out:

1. The school's vision from 25 -30 years ago is not strong enough to create growth. The school needs to change focus dramatically. We need to create Hype again, and to do this means changing focus.
2. Changing Principals is not the answer - though it might bring some change to the short term, it will not bring lasting effect.

So what is the focus of the school? What makes us different than other schools? Being simply a private school with spiritual focus is seemingly not enough to garner growth. This is the question to answer next.

On a more concrete note, I have been keeping busy with scheduling (which teachers are where and making sure that schedules match up for our teachers who teach both high school and elementary (PE and Art specialists, for example), looking at FTE's (who is at 1.0 and who is not), and creating a Personal Growth Plan for myself (this I think is key to my success). To that end, I want to personally thank those Principals and schools who are part of my group of advisors and who are allowing me to come to their schools and shadow their VP's and Principals. I am looking forward to it!

Self Assessing Grades: A Small Experiment with Large Implications

Today was standard Science 8 class which was to start with a quiz. However, I read something recently that got me thinking; John Hattie, in his book Visible Learning for Teachers, mentioned that self reporting grades was "the top-ranked effect relating to student expectations." I though I would test that hypothesis.

Before I handed the quiz out, I asked the students, on a sticky note, to predict their score. I told them exactly how many questions were on each topic, but without telling them the exact question itself. The chart below shows how they did.

Interestingly, out of the 13 students, 8 predicted their actual score to within one point, while the rest were only off by only two. The accuracy is uncanny! What does this mean with respect to education? I wonder if perhaps, as Hattie suggests, our goal with tests such as these are not to "assess" their knowledge - the student already knows that and, perhaps, the teacher could even predict how well each one would do. Instead, perhaps a change in focus needs to happen. Perhaps we as teachers need to change our role from helping them to meet their potential (which they already know) to exceeding their potential! What happens if each student could be pushed beyond their view of what they know?

Let me say it this way: if the students already know how they will do and what they know, then our instruction and assessment is simply giving us, the teacher, a quantitative number to that knowledge. However, where is the pushing and stretching? Is the knowledge at too safe a level? Yes, I am proud all of these students did well on the quiz, but if they already knew how well they would do, why do the quiz at all?

I would encourage us all to push the limits when it comes to what students can do. This doesn't mean simply more knowledge, but I think a deeper understanding of concepts (higher order thinking). The quiz above were all one word surface answers with only one question that needed a sentence response. It was a "quiz" and there was nothing wrong with administering it. However, if our assessment is based solely on these types of summative evaluations (with perhaps longer questions and even an essay here or there on pros and cons or similarities and differences) then it might just be easier to ask them what mark they will get and move on from there.

What if the student was pushed beyond their comfort zone and into the actual place where they will "learn" something they would not have known previously? Isn't that what we want teaching to do?