The article’s second point was particularly interesting to me. The importance of a set of stated, common values to an organization as an unwritten, vaguely defined set of beliefs is clear – the unwritten set allows us to sort of meander along, claiming that everyone’s on the same page without admitting that we all might have a different interpretation of the language and statements. It’s happens all the time in education circles. How many times have we heard about how important it is to use data in instruction only to hear a different explanation of what that means each time you ask someone new?

The examples in the article were brilliant. A few years into its founding, Google created a set of values it calls “10 Things We Know to be True,” and McKinsey has a long established set of values for their employees. In that spirit, here’s my 10 Things I Know to be True that would form the beginnings of a set of values for my school.

1. All Students Can Learn

Students aren’t inherently “smart” or “intelligent,” and research supports this viewpoint (see Carol Dweck and her book Mindset). Instead, students have what we call a “malleable intelligence” that is determined by how hard they work. If a student doesn’t understand a concept the first time, we don’t blame this on anything wrong with the student, we simply try and try again until the student masters the material. Every student in front of you is capable of learning the material you teach, and it’s our job to figure out how to do it.

2. Adult-Student Interactions are the Most Important Drivers of Student Achievement

Teachers teach, and when they do it well, students learn. There’s nothing that anyone else in a school can do that’s more powerful than the work teachers do with their students. This is where our work will be focused.

3. It’s Best to do One Thing Really, Really Well

It’s great to have an excellent basketball team or a lot of school spirit, but at the end of the day, schools are here to teach students. We can’t allow a secondary focus on these other things to take away anything from our primary job of preparing students for college.

4. Great Just Isn’t Good Enough

This one’s stolen directly from Google’s list. We will always set goals higher than anyone else will think attainable because when we stretch to reach those goals, we might get further than we ever though possible. There’s always room for improvement, and we will always find ways to improve everything we do.

5. Develop One Another

This is similar to one from McKinsey’s list, and it’s two-sided. On one hand, it’s not just the job of the administration to develop the practices of teachers. Everyone should be looking to share their expertise with their colleagues, and conversely, everyone should seek feedback and mentorship from others that have strengths in our growth areas. We are only as strong as the other educators in the building, and we all will take ownership of our collective growth to maximize our impact on students.

6. Think Outside the Box

Sometimes, to solve a problem, we’ll have to throw away conventional thinking and think outside the box. We accept that our new ideas may not work every time, but we believe that when we iterate continuously, we will eventually come to a strong, innovative solution to the problem.

7. Uphold the Obligation to Dissent

Another stolen directly from McKinsey. Being too agreeable in meetings and discussions isn’t good for the students because the best ideas rarely come from keeping your mouth shut. Instead, we know that you must voice your dissent and push the thinking of the group. The original idea may or may not be abandoned, but we know that the group’s decision will be smarter and smarter in the end.

8. Focus on the Student and All Else Will Follow

This is a variant on Google’s first belief. Our primary customer is the student, and as long as they are always at the center of our work, everything else will flow beautifully from that.

9. Data Makes the Invisible Visible

Data may not be the be all end all of schools, but it sure does make it a lot easier to target issues and support. We know of the power of data to make invisible problems visible, and we know that the use of data clears a path for us to act on that data in an efficient way.

10. School Culture Matters

We know that a teacher is at their best when they enjoy their job. Working in schools is challenging, but we’re much more likely to achieve more together when we focus on group achievements and having individual pride in successes that contribute to student achievement. Our job is hard, but with an energized, passionate staff, there’s no limit to what we can accomplish together.

I’m now in the third year as a formal teacher-leader in my building, with the first spent as mathematics department chair and the last two as science department chair. Looking back on it now, it’s incredible how naive I was. In my mind, my job was to tell my teachers what to do to ensure high student achievement; in other words, I needed to shine a light on the path and expect everyone to walk down on it.

What I’ve found, though, is that the job of a teacher-leader (or really, any school-based leadership) is to shine a light on a spot where the teachers can stand so that they find the path on their own.

Case in point: today I mapped out the rest of the year’s curriculum with the science team. I knew that there wasn’t enough time to cover every last detail of human anatomy (our current unit), because we still had two other units to explore to get the students ready for next year’s topics. To cover the two later units, I knew we’d have to cut down on the time spent in this one. I also knew that this unit is a favorite of many of the teachers, as it lends itself nicely to a good series of activities and it’s an easy topic as far as engagement is concerned.

From here, I had two options:

1. Tell the teachers that they will cut this unit short, ending it within a predetermined time frame. Then I’d let them know that they would have to finish these next two units before the end of the school year, and tell them exactly how the topics would fall into place.

2. Explain the context to the teachers, giving them the big picture. Let them know that there were a certain number of weeks of instruction left in the school year, and these were the topics that needed to be covered before the school year was out. Let them know that because some of those topics weren’t covered last year, the students went into 8th grade without a strong foundation and consequently had a hard time with 8th grade material. Put a calendar in front of them, and then set the goal of deciding what we would cover and wouldn’t cover by the end of the meeting.

With the first option, I doubt I’d get much more than a head nod with little compliance with the plan. The teachers wouldn’t be openly hostile or anything (although I have seen this approach met with open hostility), but as I have little formal authority, they wouldn’t have any reason to listen to me if they didn’t want to. Alternatively, the second option puts the onus on the teacher to make the decision for themselves, which creates an innate drive to accomplish what they decide to do. It’s rarely as easy as it was today, but with a careful series of questions that are designed to lead to the right conclusion, you’ll almost always get there (Socrates was a great model for this).

The other great thing about Option 2 is that it builds teacher capacity for reflection. If I’m always telling teachers what to do, I’ll have a great department full of sycophants, which does no good in the day-to-day running of a classroom. Teachers will get better if I tell them what to do, but they’ll get better much, much faster if I lead them through the reflective process enough times to the point where it becomes second nature to them, and they start to improve their practice and planning on their own.

Seemed like a fun place to start. Having taught 7th and 8th grade math, I know what kind of deficiencies my students come in with, and fractions sits high on top of that list. I’ll jump right in here. My improvements will be in bold.

• Video starts out with identifying the numerator and denominator of the fraction 3/4. Could do a better job here with a motivation for vocab here. Why don’t we just call it “the number on top” and “the number on the bottom”?Saying something like this in a class will get a glazed over look from students that’ll result in no one remembering the vocab.
• After the numerator and denominator are identified and the vocab introduced, Sal goes on to show a visual of 3/4, going with a square area model and then a circular (pie) area model. Because of examples like these (area models of fractions), students often have a hard time thinking of fractions in other contexts. One of those is parts of a set. Think of five sheep lined up. Two of the sheep are black. What fraction of the sheep are black? Another would be volume. Let’s say you’ve got a jug that holds 1 L. The bottle is marked off every 100 mL and water is filled to the 900 mL mark. What fraction of the bottle is filled with water? What fraction of the bottle is empty?
• Video ends after the second model of 3/4 is drawn. One example is almost never sufficient. Give a few more examples.

Where am I right on this? What else could be changed in the video?

In the last few months, there’s been a powerful movement in the math ed world that was kicked off by the Mystery Teacher Theater 2000 video posted to Youtube. From there, it was picked up by the more popular bloggers, including my friend Dan Meyer, who then started the MTT2K prize, which produced a dozen or so videos critiquing Khan Academy videos from the pedagogy viewpoint. Personally, I thought the original MTT2K video to be a bit too snarky for my tastes, but I understand what I hope to be the underlying point to the contest, that by leveraging the incredible pedagogical knowledge of math teachers out there, we can start to provide constructive criticism to Khan to begin to improve the quality of these videos. Granted, I’m aware that delivering instruction via video isn’t always ideal, but I’m also a realist in that this will be used no matter what we do and an idealist in that I think that Khan is really on to something, and what we can do together will inevitably give us something far better than what Khan can do on his own.

To that end, as often as I can get around to it, I’ll be picking a video and offering a set of constructive criticisms from a pedagogical point of view. Again, I won’t be perfect in this, and I’m sure I will miss other things, but two weeks after each post, I’ll take the final “deltas” for each video and synthesize them in a post edit (clearly marked as such). If you’ve got something, please put it in the comments, and let’s duke it out to make the best video we can out of this. In this, anything is fair game except a critique of the fundamental value of the Khan model – take that elsewhere. Comments in that line of thought will be deleted on sight.

As a last note, if you ever notice that the video’s been changed, put a shoutout to it on here, and I’ll keep a running log myself. Let’s have some fun here.

An interesting conundrum teacher-leaders of a school (department chairs, instructional coaches, lead teachers, etc) can run up against is getting teachers to accomplish a task with a deadline, whether it’s something small like coming to a meeting on time or something bigger like turning in a unit plan. We’re not principals, so there’s often little formal ability to hold teachers accountable, and in fact, some arrangements often strongly discourage instructional coaches or teacher leaders from going to the administration about a teacher not accomplishing a task like that if it’s not explicitly laid out in the teacher’s contract. How is it then that we hold teachers to doing these things, especially when it can have a strong impact on student achievement (as is the case with long-term unit planning)?

What’s worked for me has been showing them the benefits and incentivizing behavior that is positively correlated to student achievement. If I can’t come up with a student-centric and a teacher-centric reason for having teachers do a task, it may not be worth their time (very rarely have I run into tasks that are student-centric that don’t also help out teachers) For instance, the unit planning is pitched to teachers as some up-front work that lessens the work down the line instead of just another thing to do, it’s been much easier getting unit plans turned in from them. The incentive in this case was increased support throughout the unit. Since I knew what was coming up in their lessons, I was able to pull in more resources for them and plan informal observations and support for more daring, student-centered lessons.

Of course, providing planning time for the explicit purpose of accomplishing the task you want the teachers to do also helps, but this is rarely practical and even for schools lucky enough to have funding to pull it off.

Thoughts on this? How else do we get teachers to do things other than just teach that increase student achievement?

When I first took the creative arts job (teaching a STEM class), I thought that’d make for a significant amount of student investment right off the bat. On one hand, I was right, students were excited about a class on technology, a topic most, if not all, were interested in. What I was wrong about was that it would automatically carry itself through to increased effort in the class. Students encountered difficulty and their first instinct, just as in a math class, was to give up.

What are the implications for what this means for math teachers? Think about the question “When am I really going to use this?” We all know it’s a question that’s asked when they don’t want to do it. If they’re still not finding the motivation when they do know where they’d use it in my class, then as many have said before, the question is a false one. It’s not about where they’ll use it again. Motivation and investment aren’t centered solely around future use of a concept, and answering that question for students will do little to nothing to get them to care about what you’re teaching.

Dan’s post questions whether or not the need served by Khan is legitimate or not, and I agree with him that if there’s a classroom management piece to it, then Khan is being used for the wrong reasons (not to mention that it’s a very expensive classroom management solution when you take into account hardware costs). I have referenced it in other posts, but a large part of why Khan is used is centered around my students’ lack of basic skills fluency, and when I say basic skills fluency, I mean that I’d bet that more than 80% of the students I see in a given day still have more than a few seconds worth of though when multiplying up to 12×12 (I teach 7th and 8th grade) and only a handful can solidly answer integer operations expressions. On top of this, I appreciate Khan for the abilities it gives me in differentiation, but I reference this in the post just under this one.

Where do I look to results for the blended classroom model (even though it’s not Khan-specific)? Rocketship Education works exactly under this same model and posts some of the highest test scores in all of California. Sure, test scores aren’t the be all end all of educational achievement, but they do have something to say, especially when looked at in the context of the populations they serve.

Like I said before, I don’t speak gospel, I just work with what I’ve got a hunch might work and go from there. There’s some evidence that the model could produce great results, but I’m not positive it’s optimal, just that it may be better than what I can give my kids on my own. Comment below, continue the discussion and I’ll be in the mix as well.

Or so some would have you think.

The Khan Academy, essentially a collection of videos paired with exercises developed by a former investment banker named Sal Khan has created a firestorm in education the likes of which have not been seen in years. He’s been hailed as a savior and damned as a heretic by those inside and outside of the field. Most notable, perhaps, has been Frank Noschese’s apparent decimation of his methods in favor of an inquiry-based physics curriculum.

When I read all of this, all of the vitriol surrounding a site that was originally built for a man’s niece, I often recall the words of a mentor, speaking of the way education works. “There are no big winds in education,” he said. “What we need instead is a fleet of small ships, tacking nimbly with the wind.” My biggest issue with the attacks against Khan is that it sets up a straw man, making Khan into the presumed answer to all of our problems, and then attacks it from that direction. Khan himself – along with Bill Gates, his most famous supporter – does little to help this problem, as he does not provide the other essential half of he equation. However, looking past these straw man arguments you begin to see a bit of light, and begin to understand that although Khan is not an answer, it can be a valuable piece to the puzzle of increased student achievement.

In my short experience as an educator, I’ve come across two primary benefits to Khan, one dealing with remediation in a traditional classroom, and the other in a classroom that uses Khan Academy as a centerpiece to providing a blended instructional model. Admittedly, these examples favor math heavily, but science also fits nicely into the model, as do many other subjects with slight modifications to the example. Let’s jump in.

Remediation is perhaps the easier to swallow example. In my last two years as a math teacher in a traditionally struggling school, I have come across students whose math abilities lie all along the spectrum of achievement. I have had students that are still struggling with fluency in adding two digit numbers sitting next to students who can solve multi-step equations in their head, and I doubt my experience is too different from many of yours. What am I to do with the student that struggles with such fundamental concepts in a 7th grade classroom? Am I to focus my limited attention on that student at the expense of others? Without having to provide an answer to those difficult questions, I find an answer in the Khan Academy’s exercise and tracking portal. Instead of sacrificing my limited time to remediate with those students, I can pair in situ remediation with a remediation plan centered around the Khan Academy for those students that they can complete at home. The exercises and videos can be completed entirely on their own or with moderate – and manageable – help from the teacher with the goal of eventually catching the student up to the median achievement of the rest of the class. Granted, this strategy does require some student buy-in, but even if this catches one student up, I’m going to consider it a worthwhile endeavor.

Inside a KA-centric classroom, we are presented with a similar situation. Students all enter at different achievement levels, so why not meet them where they are instead of where the curriculum says they should be? Differentiation is where the KA truly shines. That student still struggling with addition? Let them work on addition, and with the privacy allowed by Khan, let them work on it without fear of shame. The student blowing past multi-step equations? Let them continue on with the subject, and hope that they reach the highest heights of mathematical achievement. The part that’s not being entered into the mainstream conversation right now is that this is not a Vulcan school environment, where each student is perpetually on their own, but an environment where students split their time between KA work and problem-based learning explorations as a group, more along the lines of a Dan Meyer problem that requires them to strengthen their mathematical problem-solving muscles.

All of this said, I must confess, as with the vast majority of educational manifestos, I can support this line of thought only through supposition without any real hard evidence. There is some data to suggest that this strategy may support increased student achievement, but my strongest apprehension with the blended classroom is its cost relative to how the money could be spent elsewhere. All the same, that does not remove the strength of Khan as a supporting tool to the mathematics (or other subject) classroom as a remediation or acceleration tool for students more than one standard deviation outside the norm, and from what I can tell, the hate thrown its way is seriously dampening the conversation directed towards that.

Although I will not have a KA-centered classroom this year, I will be leading one, and hope to report on its progress over the course of the year, along with the struggles of implementing it. Please let me know your thoughts below and keep the conversation going, just be ready with more than just the same lines of argument on either side that have either blindly supported or attacked what I see as not a silver bullet, but a weapon nonetheless in the fight against educational inequity.

2. Students assigned to independent laptop work log onto the KA portal, check their goals for the week, and get to work on those goals. Unless asked to move into small-group with the teacher for PBL explorations or targeted interventions, they will work on KA for the entirety of the class.

3. Students assigned to small-group with laptops are typically put into this group for peer coaching or teacher-led interventions. In general, a mini-lesson will be given by the teacher or a leading student, and then practice problems generated by KA – usually with the scaffolded help of manipulatives or other resources – will be used until teacher or peer coach has determined that they’re ready to move back to independent work. Depending on the student’s progress, they may or may not be taking back the scaffolds with them. Students will then stay on KA for the rest of the class unless asked to move back for more interventions or PBL explorations.

4. Students assigned to small group without laptops are for PBL explorations. The teacher will usually introduce the problem/conflict and then either stay or leave the students to solve depending on the group and students contained therein. Usually PBL explorations take up about half of the class, although may extend over multiple class periods. Once that is finished, students retrieve a laptop and work on KA for the remainder of class.

5. At the end of my 72 minute period, usually with about 4 minutes left, I strategically dismiss students to replace their laptops back into the cart and then return to their seats. I prefer to have them put them away so that I can keep track of which computer each student is using and to hold them accountable for any computer misbehavior that ends up happening (prying off keys, leaving music player open, etc). It also provides about 10 minutes of charge time in between each class for the computers to charge, which helps them make it the entire day without needing a power cord plugged in all the time.

During all of this, my location is fluid. I may be with a PBL group, I may be doing targeted small-group intervention, I may be working on an individual intervention at a student’s seat (I like to carry around a chair just for this purpose), or I may be checking student data mid-class to assess progress toward student goals and check to see if any students are struggling and need assistance.

Any questions? Anything I missed and you’re curious about?

The KA classroom has to be adaptable to the many situations the students may find themselves in, and when I arranged the furniture with the class structure in mind, I came up with a solution has worked well for a 7th grade KA-driven classroom. On one side of the room, I have two large (8 students each) centers for them to work on their laptops. There’s another 4-6 student table just next to these two centers for the same purpose.

On the right side of the room, I have a small group center for anywhere from 3-8 students, in front of which I place my SMART board, projector, and teacher station. In general, students bring their laptops with them to the small group area since KA creates the problems that drive the instruction for the students. The small group area is also for PBL work as needed, in which case the students may or may not need their laptops.

In addition to these, I also have two desktop computers set up in the back of the room along with two desks in isolation from the rest of the group. These four stations are largely for behavior management, with the intention of getting students that can’t immediately produce results in a group setting to develop the initiative to earn my trust back enough to get to sit with the other students in a group. These are the only four seats in the room that are assigned, for every other seat, students choose their table mates. From what I can tell, they’ve done it based largely on friendships, but as they all know that a lack of productivity means they’ll lose group privileges, it hasn’t been a problem from my perspective.

The chaos can be scary, and even though I had my kids for more than 160 days when I started the program, it was still a bit of a shell shock to know that their moves weren’t carefully choreographed by me anymore. Without the strong, ingrained vocabulary of “trust” that I worked so hard for all year (thanks Rafe Esquith!), this definitely would not have been possible.