Practical Theory

One of the things I'm always meaning to do on my blog but don't do as often as I'd like is break down how we do some of the things we do at SLA. So when someone asked a really good question on Facebook, it seemed like a perfect time to turn the answer into a blog post. Here's the question:

I have been involved with schools that have an advisory system -- but it seems very challenging to bring it into the public school system since teachers are not trained to be advisors. How do you suggest we work towards solving this issue?

The most important thing is this: Prioritize it. So what does that look like...

1) Schedule it with real time and don't make that time the dumping ground or the place you steal time from every time something comes us. Don't make it first thing in the morning so it is easy to skip. Treat it as a real extra class that teachers have to work to prepare for, because while it may not be as much work from a grading perspective, the time and energy teachers will spend caring for children, getting to know families, dealing with issues that come up is real. Advisory cannot be the thing teachers deal with after they have dealt with everything else or it will just be "homeroom" like it is in so many places. For us, that means scheduling time for Advisory for 50 minutes at the end of the day, twice a week, and teachers teach four classes plus Advisory instead of five classes plus homeroom as they would in other School District of Philadelphia schools.

2) Don't assume that teachers know how to care for children - teach them how to. I love Carol Lieber's book "The Advisory Guide" (published by Educators for Social Responsibility) as a foundation text. Do a book study with teachers about it. Then have a subcommittee that helps to draft a framework for the curriculum with broad themes for each year and examples of ways to execute them. Our committee has our Health teacher, our counselors and some of the teachers who are really invested in Advisory and they set the agenda (with me) on how to run workshops for our faculty.

3) Make it matter by making it a core function of the school. We don't have traditional Parent-Teacher Conferences here. We have Parent-Student-Advisor conferences where teachers all write narrative report cards which are then processed / talked about / reviewed by the parent, student and advisor together. This makes the Advisor the primary link to the families, which goes a long way toward really making the power of Advisory tranparent to families (and teachers.) If a child gets in trouble, advisors are looped in immediately. Our college counselor works with the advisors so that they are the primary school-based adults to help students make decisions about their college process.

4) Don't make it "just another class." Teachers know how to teach classes, but they may not know how to have a class that is really more group high school survival therapy than any other subject. So you have to help teachers resist the urge to create assignments that can be graded and have homework, etc... I always think of Advisory as a pressure value for kids, so if it becomes something that has a lot of homework and requires a lot of work for a grade, it defeats the purpose.

In the end, the shorthand we use for the way we think about how Advisory drives much of the way we think about the relationships between students and teachers can be summed up with two ideas - first, you have to think of Advisory as the soul of your school. Second, with everything you do, remember that you teach students before you teach subjects. At SLA, we believe there is a difference between saying, "I teach English" and "I teach kids English." Kids should never be the implied object of their own education. Advisory is the place in the schedule where that idea has its core and then it spreads into everything else we do.

The "great teacher" myth continues. This is the myth that says, "If only we could get rid of the really bad teachers, we'd have better schools." It's particularly pernicious because it sounds so easy, right? Let's just dump the bottom (5% / 10% / 33% - depending on who's writing) and even if we only replace them with "average" teachers, we'll be better off, right?

Right?

In his NY Times column today, Nick Kristof would have you believe it were so.

I'm not going to take this one on from the "how do you really know who the great teachers are?" lens.

I'm not going to (directly) take it on from the "we have a massive young teacher attrition rate that research has shown has little to do with pay and more to do with working conditions, so where are these great (or average) new teachers coming from?"

I'm going to ask this question, "When are we going to start asking ourselves why we make it so hard to be a great teacher?"

And this isn't about professional development for struggling teachers.

This is about school-level reform.

The nation - or at least its politicians, its pundits and its billionaires - has made this debate about labor (read unions) by atomizing this debate down to the teacher level. And while there is room for conversation there, it misses the larger picture. Our schools are structurally dysfunctional places which, therefore, makes teaching and learning much harder than it needs to be, so that teachers -- and students -- have to succeed despite the system, rather than because of it.

As long as high school students have to travel to eight different classes where eight different teachers talk about grading / standards / learning in eight different ways, students will spend far too much trying to figure out the adults instead of figuring out the work. When that happens, too many students will fall through the cracks and fail. If we built schools where there was a common language of teaching and learning and common systems and structures so that kind people of good faith can bring their ideas and creativity and passion to bear within those systems and structures and help kids learn, we will find that more teachers can be the kind of exemplary teachers that Mr. Kristof wants.

As long as there is little to no time in the high school schedule for teachers and students to see and celebrate each other's shared humanity, too many students will feel that school is something that is done to them, that teachers care more about their subjects than they do about the kids. As long as teachers have 120-150 kids on their course roster, and there is little continuity year to year so that relationships cannot be maintained, too many students will be on their own when they struggle. If we build schools where teachers and students have time to relate to one another as people - if we create pathways for students and teachers to know each other over time, so that every child knows they have an adult advocate in their school, we make schools more human -- and more humane - for all who inhabit them.

Let's stop falling victim to the soft thinking that just finding more "great teachers" and getting rid of all the bad ones is the way to reform education and start asking ourselves - "How do we create schools that make it easier for all students and teachers to shine?"

[This is the first guest post I've ever had on Practical Theory in eight years of blogging. Today's post was written by SLA senior and co-founder of Phresh Philadelphia Rashaun Williams. There's been a lot of talk at SLA about the Gene Marks piece and how angry it made us. Rashaun's piece speaks to how I've felt better than anything I'd written, so here it is. You can follow Rashaun on Twitter at @DJReezey.]

A Response to If I Were A Poor Black Kid by Gene Marks

by Rashaun Williams

If I were a wealthy man, I would ensure my children go to the most prestigious schools available. I would move to the suburbs, because then I could ensure safety, excellent property value, and always surround myself in beauty. I would be financially comfortable enough to take time from my work schedule, and participate greatly in my child’s schooling, help my children with their homework every night, cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for them daily, and help them financially all the way through college. I would show them the importance of home equity, maintaining great credit, balancing a check book, and how to be a man or a woman. In conclusion, they would be fed. They would be safe. They would be supported in every way imaginable. They would be American citizens. But I’m not a wealthy man. I am a “black kid” in the inner city, and by some standards, you could even say I’m a “poor black kid”. Considering all the experiences that have created my current station in life, being a model of success in a broken community hasn’t seemed anything close to possible. But I still try.

There are parts of my city that are chronically susceptible to unemployment, low property value, illegal activity, informal markets and so many other things that plague minority communities in American cities. Unfortunately, decades of black settlement in the inner cities after the Great Migration haven’t yielded the promises of success so many people dreamed of when they fled an inhumane South. Many cannot afford to send their children to prestigious schools, and due to the mismanagement of public schooling, ensuring their safety is literally no longer in their hands. Our communities, the ones you allude to being a “world away” from you within the very same city, suffer in ways you and your children will hopefully never know. After all, you said you have been lucky enough to live an economically comfortable life, nor do you suffer from the generational struggle to ensure the education, well-being and proper growth of your children. You have had the luxury of not focusing on the bare essentials and the time to contemplate options beyond simply making monthly bills, paying rent. As you suggest, your salary has been more than suffice to set up a future.

As a people, African Americans have remained strong-willed, even after losing some of our greatest leaders in the most tragic and sickening ways. We’ve continued to fight for success, even though barely a mediated allusion in our own Constitution, to the point where “one of our own” is able to sit in the White House. But what does one man’s success, albeit empowering, mean to millions of others who are simply not afforded the same fundamental opportunities to pursue such lofty aspirations. Being black in this country, in 2012, still does carry a heavy weight. This has not been an easy struggle, and quite frankly, many of “my people” are tired of fighting. They are tired of being numb to daily reports of fresh violence against our own people. Tired of various forms of oppression, which now seem to be ever so invisible because a black man is at the helm of the nation. But this is no excuse for us to quit, and quit we have not. Being an inner city black kid in Philadelphia, I know that education is my liberation, but the journey to such a thing in a neighborhood where poverty grows almost exponentially with each seems less than possible.

In order to have a mind stable enough to interpret information, receive knowledge, and regularly apply oneself to school, one must have the proper necessities of living. When talking about those who are poor in the inner city, we must understand that they are experiencing multiple levels of poverty. A body without nourishment is a brain out of commission, and a brain without knowledge is a body without a mission. In response to what the number one priority is for most people living in poverty, it is a hot meal every time. Without it, it’s impossible to progress both as a student trying to learn without food, or as a teacher trying to nurture knowledge in those who simply cannot concentrate on the task at hand.

Yes, it does take the ability and the know-how to use the resources that are available to make progress, but what resources do individuals in poverty truly have? How can one be well- informed about what the Internet truly has to offer if they have no in-depth access to the world-wide web? Why would one even consider making time to go online when their mind is preoccupied with simple things like their next meal and/or survival? How can one think of a future via college, when simply traveling to high school is an issue? When does a school have time to give students external opportunities when overwhelmed with the process of teaching basic reading, writing, arithmetic to maintain foundational federal funding? How can a teacher help nurture a future citizen when their evaluation of progress is enslaved to standardized testing? Where does a school get the money to purchase the resources necessary for learning when city, state and federal governments consistently apply severe austerity measures? How can a city hog tie their most important resource to a property tax system when the property they tax is left to rot? How can a child utilize recreational facilities when their Mayor wants to cut funding that makes them available? How is a “poor black kid” supposed to access the Internet when their public library is closed more often than not? The answers to these questions lie deep within the structure and development of unsupported communities that struggle to develop conducive environments for learning, economic opportunity and business development.

Above all things, the most important question is, how do we restructure? This will takes brains. This will takes hard work. This will take a little luck. And a this will take a little help from others. Most importantly, this will take reform and action. In order to restructure communities where “poor black kids” live, education needs to be based on individuals. If our government creates districts to section regions of the nation’s states based on the individuals’ living in certain areas, why wouldn’t the school system work the same way? If the needs of citizens vary based on their location and living essentials, why wouldn’t the approach to education be fit for students as individuals? After all, we will eventually become engaged citizens.

Citizens develop jobs. Citizens become teachers. Citizens become parents, business owners, civic association members, citizens start for profit and non-profit organizations, citizen become politicians and citizens become our future leaders. If impoverished minority communities don’t have the schooling that supports this type of localized citizen-growth and eventual harvest, we will still have people writing blogs about "if they were a poor black kid" from the inner city. Citizens aren’t just the very fabric of America, they are America. The real problem is that “poor black kids” aren’t treated like citizens. Maybe we should change that.

“We want to make great teachers rich,” said Jason Kamras, the district’s [Washington, DC] chief of human capital.

That's from an article about merit pay in Sunday's New York Times.

I don't want to talk about merit pay which to me suffers from most of the same magical thinking flaws that high-stakes testing suffers from. Read Tom Sobol's speech from 2003 for the best delineation of how NLCB gets it wrong, if you need a reminder, and make up your mind for yourself if most of the arguments he makes apply to merit pay as well. I think many of them do.

I want to talk about the idea that we want to make teachers rich.

We shouldn't.

Economically, teaching should be a wonderfully middle-class career.

You should be able to buy a house in the district you teach in.

You should be able to afford to send your own children to college.

You should be able to teach for a career and then retire with a pension.

You should not feel like teaching is unsustainable economically.

I don't think teachers should aspire to riches, and I worry that someone who is running the Human Resource department of a major urban district would think we should.

To me, that speaks to so much that is wrong in our country. Right now we have a disappearing middle-class… and those of us left in the middle class are made to feel that our grip on it is tenuous at best. I worry this creates a dichotomy where there is only "rich" and "poor" - and that is no good for our country. I make more money as a high school principal than I ever thought I would when I went into education…. and I make about 125% what a teacher at the top of the pay scale in Philly makes. That should be enough. What bothers me is that making a teacher's salary (or even a principal's salary) doesn't feel secure. I don't know how I'm going to pay for Jakob and Theo's college… and I worry a lot that the pension and social security that should take care of me when I'm retired won't be there. I worry that the house my wife and I bought could lose value - although Philly has held value much better than most places in the country. Dealing with those issues as a society would go a long way toward making teachers feel much more financially secure than a raise based on test scores ever could.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be economically secure. But thinking that we are going to somehow find the "best" teachers and make them rich is to set teachers off on a chase for something that makes the kids a mere means to an end that we shouldn't be chasing in the first place.

Let's make teachers feel secure economically. Let's make sure there's a middle class for them to belong to. Let's make a life of service honorable and secure. But let's not forget that service doesn't have to -- and probably shouldn't -- "make you rich."

Many principals in the School District of Philadelphia worked at least some of this week. (I took Monday and Tuesday off.) One of my colleagues talked about how, after catching up on paperwork, cleaning her office and getting a lot of the immediate stuff off of her plate, she wasn't sure what to do next. I threw out some ideas… write up a wish-list of where you want your school to be… revisit a process in the school that you don't think works well… or even just catch up on the Ed Leadership magazines that gather dust in the office. Of course, I was making those suggestions while still feeling the weight of my "must-do" list.

And as I've been reflecting on that interaction for two reasons. The first thing I was thinking about was how, after what has been a very stressful last year or so in the School District, it is harder than it should be to actually step back, reflect and plan. So many principals - myself included too often - have been struggling to deal with the changes, the cuts, the mandates, such that when we find ourselves without an imminent deadline, we don't always know what to do. I try to keep a list of stuff to do when I find myself not knowing what to work on next, but when you are always living in crisis, it can be really hard to get to that list. And all over this country, principals (and teachers) are living in the grind too much. And for me, I needed this week at work - as crazy as that sounds - just to feel good about entering 2012 ready and not in the middle of a crisis, even if I didn't clear everything off of my to-do list - let alone my wish list.

But then, I started thinking about our students who struggle the most in our schools. Most teachers who don't assign homework over Winter Break tell those students who are behind, "Use this time to catch up." I know I did that all the time. And a lot of kids do use Winter Break to catch up, but then they haven't really gotten out of that crisis mode. It is easy to say, as a teacher, "Why didn't you use the rest of the time to plan? To get ahead?" But when you have felt behind for so long, it can be hard to look forward and plan… and so patterns get repeated.

If we want schools to be healthier places, we have to look at the unhealthy patterns that exist and try to figure out how to undo them. I don't like living in crisis-mode, so on a personal / administrative mode, I am going to make more of a concerted effort to figure out how not to. But I think I have to remember to be one school here. I want all of adults at SLA to think about that feeling of "Oh no, what's next?" that we have all felt from time to time… and I want us to remember the paralysis we felt when we fell behind on narratives and then had to catch up… or when the grading load nearly broke us… and then I want us to think about how we can not just learn to mitigate those moments for ourselves, but for our kids as well.

[tap, tap, tap... is this on? Anyone still reading? Sorry I've been gone so long.]

This is an idea I've been kicking around... anyone who has been with me for my workshop on Where Does It Live: Building Systems and Structures Around What You Believe knows that I think schools need to do a better job of saying what they do and doing what they say. What follows is my attempt to distill a lot of that into an accessible question for parents and students to ask of their schools. It is, simply, this:

I believe than any parent should be able to walk into any school and ask any teacher, student, staff member, "What does teaching and learning look like here? What are the ways in which that is nurtured and developed for everyone in the school community?" and get a real, coherent answer that isn't just lip-service.

Don't we want families to ask those questions?

Don't we want schools that can answer those questions meaningfully?

We can, as a society, hold in our heads that schools can answer those questions meaningfully and differently. And we can understand that any school that can meaningfully answer those questions probably has a better shot of being a school that truly matters than one that cannot.

We will only know what schools that matter look like when we work toward our answers to those questions and when we start sharing our answers.

So how would your school answer those questions?

I sat in Mr. Latimer's Algebra II class today during my walk-arounds. I watched two students struggle as they attempted to figure out where they went along in a multivariable multistep equation. It was interesting because I watched them struggle with the step-by-step process, they couldn't see clearly how change in one line affected everything that came after. Mr. Latimer and the rest of the students in the class worked with the students to work through the process, and then Mr. Latimer talked about ways to get through being "stuck" in the middle of a complex problem.

What struck me as I was watching was that they were trying to debug the equation. And on some level that's not a radical thought. We know that math and computer science have profound links. But what struck me next was that the science teachers talk about this kind of process all the time too when they talk about experimental design and changing only one variable at a time. And I realized that we had at least three places in school where we talked around what, in my brain I was calling debugging, but kids weren't seeing the cross-connections. They weren't realizing they were doing the same thing.

So I went looking for Mark Miles, our computer-science / math teacher and he agreed that that was a skill that crossed discipline-based boundaries, but he called what I was talking about "incremental problem solving." And Gamal Sherif talked about how they teach the kids about dependent variables for much the same reason.

And the thing is, I don't care what we call it… I just want kids to realize that we're talking about the same thing.

And that's where common language comes in. It is good to help kids understand that we may call the same basic skill different things in different contexts, but it is also good to help them develop that common language so that they don't up spending a lot of time relearning something they already know in a different context… or as Diana Laufenberg put it when I was talked to her about it, "We have to allow for skill transference."

And that's at the heart of common language. Lower the bar of figuring out the adults, and you raise the bar of what kids can actually do by helping them get to the work more quickly and powerfully.

So Mr. Latimer (who is also chair of our Academic Standards Committee) and I sat down at the end of the day, and next Tuesday, when our Math and Science teachers sit down to talk about ways we can better craft common language between the two disciplines, the notion of debugging or incremental problem solving or whatever will be on the table as one of the ways we can tighten our language so students can transfer skills across disciplines more easily.

And why I chose to write about this tonight was because this wouldn't have happened if I was sitting in Mr. Latimer's class with a checklist of things I was looking for instead of just watching and using the more open protocol of "I noticed…," "I wonder…," and "What if…." It put me in a place where I could watch and think about what I was seeing and dream a bit too. And it wouldn't have gone anywhere if SLA teachers were defensive about their teaching or if they didn't make the time to talk to a colleague or a principal who was excited and working through a half-baked idea or if we didn't have structured time to talk about improving our practice or if we didn't have a commitment as a school to creating common language wherever we can.

One of the school-wide goals we made this year was to spend more time in each other's classrooms watching and thinking. There will be days we go in after having talked about our UbDs so we can look specifically for how we move from plan to execution. There will be days we walk through looking for opportunities for using the grade-wide themes. And there will be other lenses from time to time, too. But importantly, there will be plenty of time where we go in and just notice, wonder and dream, without a specific lens or notion of why we are there. Because the art of active observation and the will to question and dream are as important and powerful -- if not more so -- than any other lens might be.

[This post is my attempt to make sense of, and reflect upon, the many conversations I have had with parents recently. Some of those conversations left me deeply at a loss for words, and the best I felt I could do was to show a parent how much I love the person their child was that day.]

Not surprisingly, I've had roughly 37,000 conversations with kids over the years about parents. Teenagers often talk about how their parents don't understand them, and even more often, teenagers talk about how parents let them do what they want to do… or overreact when the kids make mistakes.

What I try to explain to students is this, that as much as one would think that the number one emotion is love, it often times is not. It's fear. Before I was a parent, little scared me. The world seemed to make sense, and I thought that I could exert a fair amount of control on my universe.

Then I became a father.

And the world terrified me. Every car that drove down our street became a threat. Every situation had to be examined for potential dangers.

It is my life's goal not to pass that fear onto Jakob and Theo, and so far so good, I think. But it's hard.

That fear is probably the thing I was least expecting about being a parent. It is the thing that is hardest to deal with, and while I know it comes from deep and profound love that I have for my children, I struggle with it. And I know many others who do as well.

So when students come to me and ask why their parents act the way they do, why they react so strongly, I say simply,

Because you used to fit in the crook of our arms. And every parent I have ever known remembers that feeling. Our bodies remember that, and there is no way to make it make sense to you, not now, not yet, Not until you become a parent too. But you used to fit in the crook of our arms. And every parent remembers that… And remembers thinking, "I will keep you safe."

And I try to remember that when I work with parents, especially when I am the bearer of bad news. The young adult in front of me used to fit in the crook of that parent's arms, that parent has promised to keep them safe, they got them to SLA, and they still worry and fear for all of pain the world can inflict on their child.

In our best moments as schools, we can help parents build that vision of their children for the wonderful, amazing young adults they are. We can help parents understand who their children are today and see that person they are today as part of the continuum from birth to adulthood. We can help parents see that children take what they need up their parent's dreams and use them, add to them, change them to build their own. And in our hardest moments, we have to comfort parents and understand them when circumstances arise such that that fear that every parent knows is given cause to rise to the surface.

[Ever since I became a principal, I've blogged much less about my personal politics. I hope folks who read this blog understand why I felt the need to write this and respect that I am asking that the comments do not become a place to argue about the case itself.]

Tomorrow morning, I'll go into our school with its incredibly diverse population of wonderful urban kids.

Tomorrow, I'll have many conversations with kids who are trying to make sense of fact that the state of Georgia executed a man whose guilt was very much in doubt. Sadly, the best I can offer them is that so am I.

Tomorrow the best I will have to offer students is that I don't have any more answers than they do. That I am as confused and angry as they are.

Tomorrow I will be reminded - even more than most days - of how troubled we are as a nation… how far we have to go in the ways we talk about and deal with race…. and I hope, as I often am, that I will be reminded of how this next generation will be more understanding, more honest, more accepting than my generation is.

Tomorrow I will share Chris Emdin's words about how urban kids can learn from what happened to Troy Davis.

Tomorrow I will remind kids to be smart and to be safe in the choices they make and to never put themselves in situations they cannot get out of.

Tomorrow the best I have for kids is that we must try to live our lives with compassion and wisdom.

Tomorrow I will believe that the way we learn at SLA might just give us a pathway to change the world.

Tomorrow I talk about how I believe that changing the world starts when we try to be the best versions of ourselves and move outward from there.

Tomorrow I will listen to kids as deeply and openly as I know how.

Tomorrow I will tell the kids how much I love them.

Tomorrow I walk back into the building that represents my best answer to how to create a more just, more kind world.

Tomorrow I will make sure the kids know that they are my best hope for a solution.

The adults at SLA spent the last week working.

We took apart the stuff we do and put it back together again. We spent several hours talking about standards based reporting, time on our senior capstone, time working in our grade groups, time going over our goals in each advisory grade, and more. We came to some decisions with difficulty, because consensus is pretty hard, but we worked through issues and made the school better because everyone took the time to do so. I ran somewhere around 15% of the workshops, the rest were run by the teachers who were incredibly thoughtful in their strategies to create meaningful workshops for their colleagues.

We use our Title I money to pay for the time to do that every year. And every year, we wonder, now that the school is a little older, a little more mature, do we still need that much time? And every year, we can't believe how important every minute of that time still is.

Every Wednesday afternoon this year - like every other year - we will gather in the library for two hours and work and talk and make our school better through the process of working together. We leverage student internships and capstones and our museum partnership to make that time available.

It has to get easier for schools to make time for that work.

I talked with friends in other schools and they talked about having two mandatory days before school to come in and get ready for the school year, and I think, how? How do you make shared decisions about the trajectory of the year in two days? How do you take time to revisit the ideals of a school in only two days? How do you let faculty work together to tweak policies and procedures in two days?

And then, even worse, how do you have to wait a month or two before you all get to spend an hour or two in the same space for some reflection and some refocusing?

And yet, at the vast majority of schools all over the country, that's exactly what happens.

One of my core beliefs about school these days is that we need to get teachers off of the hamster wheel of the current school-day model. Teachers need time to collaborate, to plan, to innovate. And schools need to find ways to build frequent - I believe weekly - time for everyone to sit in a room and work together to make schools better.

I had an amazing week of working with the most amazing group of educators. I finished the week - paradoxically exhausted and deeply ready for the work ahead.

Teachers and administrators need time to make schools better. There really is no shortcut to sitting together in the room and working it all out together.

For SLA, I wouldn't want it any other way.