Instruction Magic
The conduct of children from birth to school age contains the seeds of nearly every learning strategy they will need. Moreover, these natural early learning strategies have inspired the significant educational research reported today and reflected in current evidence-based effective practices. Piaget, whose work influenced early childhood education, reports observations of children from birth to starting school. He tells us that their interactions with their environment, parents and other people are the building blocks of future learning. These blocks result from sensory motor skill and early language learning — listening and babbling, crawling and walking, speaking and scribbling, etc. All these behaviors include such thought processes as purpose, repetition and intent in response to sensation. A friend shared how she noted these behaviors in her three-year-old. She reported feeding the child mashed mango for the first time. With each spoonful she said, “Delicious.” The child repeated delicious each time until after the fourth spoon, she said, “Delicious. I don’t like it.”
Piaget’s work informs curriculum planning and appropriate methodology for preschool and primary grades. The children listen, speak, scribble and imitate the teacher to form letters and match letters to sounds and to write sentences in response to new learning experiences. These experiences foster self-talk, oral expression and even sentence writing and reading. The earlier unending toddler’s questions of: “What’s that?”, “Why”, and “How?” –so wondrous to parents, become the first graders serious work.
The learning behaviors, instinctive in little children, were valuable observations worthy of testing, evaluating, discussing and reporting to Piaget and other psychologists who studied human development and learning. They selected what seemed the most effective learning strategies. They tested those strategies. Several were confirmed effective more than three hundred times. (Friedman, 2006) The most useful concepts for teaching and learning are so universal as to have become educator’s aphorisms. They are reflected in Blooms Taxonomy for cognition, Bruners Spiral Learning model, and Ganges Unit template, and more recently Rosenshines Principles of Instruction.
The Post World War Two G.I. Bill, originally intended as a form of post-war unemployment relief, resulted in an influx of veterans in colleges and universities. Prior to the Bill’s provisions which paid for post-secondary education, veterans previously viewed education as a privilege of the wealthy and a mark of high status. Now that perception broke down, a college education became “a dream for the everyday man.” More students remained in high schools and graduated than ever before. The practicality of millions of veterans entering colleges and universities, inspired States to strengthen public school curriculum, and educators saw the need to improve programs in both elementary school and high school.
In order to facilitate school improvement, colleges of education began rigorous review and evaluation of teacher preparation. Teacher training changed from including two-year “normal school programs” to a national requirement of four-year programs. Professors and their graduate students expanded their research in the pedagogy and the curriculum of K-12. The findings of the educational research into teaching/learning and curriculum planning were taken very seriously. By the end of that decade, American schools were judged the best in the world and proved that the inclusiveness of democracy was a positive influence on education.
Consider the following strategies they have left for us:
Most of these strategies are based on “cradle-to-grave” concepts for learning and teaching and have become synonymous with effectiveness
Readiness—crawl before you walk
Repetition—practice makes perfect
Set goals/objectives—if you don’t know where you are going, you won’t get there.
Focus/time on task—keep your eyes on the prize.
Selecting and sequencing material—Goldilocks, neither too hard nor too easy
Provide feedback—nothing succeeds like success
Modeling/Demonstration—don’t just tell me, show me
Provide Relevant Context—can’t see the forest for the trees.
When I attended colleges of education at three different state universities, we were taught to and required to develop instructional units that illustrated our understanding of these concepts and their application to teaching in our major fields. We shared our units to prove their usefulness no matter the grade or subject area.
Under the current circumstances of many urban school districts being shamed and threaten with State takeover because of poor national Report Cards, I wonder why district leadership fails to set forth methodology along with core curriculums. Shortly after one of my area’s report caused this sort of turmoil, I called their curriculum and instruction office. I hoped to suggest some “rescue resources.” After my being on hold for ten minutes, a very young sounding person picked up the phone and said, “Good morning, I am the CEO of Curriculum, how can I help you?” Without meaning to offend current urban school district leadership, I remember being a part of modestly paid, traditionally titled, very experienced leadership. We enjoyed our work when American public schools were “ A+-#1 and at the top of the heap.” In those days, our curricula were “home-made”, and effective because of embedded, well-researched methodology. Our approach was district-wide, systematic and cumulative.
Having spent most of my adult life studying, employing and teaching instruction and curricula, I want to share some reflections. Instruction and curriculum are interdependent. Logically, the school’s curriculum may come into existence first, but it is just a lovely, lonely wish without instruction. One of my favorite college professors often told us, “Remember, an excellent curriculum may be destroyed by poor instructional strategies, but on the other hand, excellent methodology can salvage a weak curriculum.” I tell the teachers and students with whom I work, “Methodology is the magic that makes schools effective.”
Now as school districts worry over how to help students “catch-up” after the loss of a year, I’d like to persuade them to welcome their students to a “revised edition” of their school district. Now in their school district critical issues are “system-wide”. Their leadership is not only highly paid, but also accountable for student performance. In this district “evidence-based” is more than a talking point. When the students come to a revised district and deposit their most valuable asset, thousands of hours of life, they will receive dividends, meaningful learning experiences, not cognitive overload and fast forgetting.
Leadership in their revised districts will have acknowledged the obligation to provide, well planned, systematic cumulative instruction for each and every student in each and every building. The leadership will have embraced the truth that presenting their best curriculum and instruction for all students, without regard to race nor family financial status, is the district’s most solemn obligation. They shall not have posted Bloom’s “Taxonomy of Learning” in every classroom of every building, while rejecting his seminal research conclusion: “Any child can learn anything any other child has learned, if provided appropriate experiences and sufficient time.”
When I become the chairperson for language arts at a middle school and high school, I changed the high school offerings from 36 different elective at three levels: regular, academic and honors to grade-level courses: language arts—seven through twelve and provided six electives open only to students who had met the writing proficiency standard. We used district-wide units that over arched daily lesson plans. Each course of the same name contained the same content and skills and used the same methodology. Class schedules were arranged so that teachers who taught the same course had the same planning period. The teachers’ planning-room conversation changed from “what’s new” to purposeful interaction for developing questions, thesis statements and practice activities for literature analysis. Teachers helped one another. Conversation among students changed also, from “My teacher doesn’t do that “, to “We do that too, let me help you.” Further, when I read the marking-period response to literature essays, student performance showed increasing improvement. I was pleased to know that we were providing our best teaching to all students. We no longer engaged in the professional malpractice of “our best to those who deserve it.”
I respectfully suggest that the leadership of urban school districts try our approach. It really worked and is still the best practice. Consider all the benefits of district-wide when compared to the many burdens of “site-based effort instruction and curriculum.” This dispersed effort will always result in performance poorer than necessary. Inevitably the weaker schools not only get weaker each year, but also their weakness is greater than the strength of the district’s strongest, in both student performance and number of schools. Further, the principals and teachers in the weaker schools are less likely to feel supported by leadership and benefit from their expertise and the stronger schools less likely to see the need for leadership. All and all, consider the potential of the merits of a district-wide approach.
The consolidation of course offerings reduced the cost of textbooks and other materials. When we might otherwise have needed to replace materials, adjustments could easily be made; also, we did less copying of materials. We realized significant saving from the professional development and regular teachers in-service costs. Teacher in-service meetings allowed collaboration among teachers from different schools. Because the curriculum and instruction were district-wide, meetings were more productive than before. When meetings made use of guest presenters, the presentations were more focused on district concerns and follow-up meetings with the outside experts and district leaders were also more productive. Districts avoided the disappointment of expensive “hit or miss but always hit and run” presentations that teachers complain against. The district-wide approach made presentation ideas more helpful and likely to be implemented.
State-wide and national testing followed by Report Cards published in all the newspapers created the possibility of finger-pointing and blame games. District-wide programs of instruction and curriculums created shared accountability. If needs-to-improve situations occurred, cooperative effort was the likely response. Moreover, positive assessment created community praise and shared joy. We had that experience, when a Board of Education member reported that because of the new programs, students were helping one another with homework and other lessons. Another example occurred towards the end of the school year, when our students could go on a field trip. Many times, such experiences were cancelled because neither teachers nor parents were willing to help chaperone and bus drivers were nearly impossible to hire. This year both issues changed. Not only did we have chaperones, but we were able to secure buses. When the students returned, one driver came into the building and told the principal, “I promise you, we will take your kids anytime. They recited poems all the way there and all the way back.” This was all the reward any of us needed.
When leadership works with teachers and provides guidance for effective instruction in a helpful, supportive manner, a mutually respectful partnership is developed. Too often leadership blames teachers and principals when students’ performance is unsatisfactory and sometimes even threatens them with termination. In return, teachers and principals accuse leaders of doing nothing but “dump on them” while hiding in administrative offices and getting high pay. In truth, leadership could break this negative back-and-forth by creating for the schools district-wide instructional methodology. Their failure to do so stems from a fear of failure and condemnation. On the contrary, teachers and principals are more likely to make polite suggestions for improvements that help to make the lessons work better. This joint effort will demonstrate success. After a couple of years, the methodology will be much better and more effective. By the third year, student performance will be significantly improved, and the Report Card will reflect academic success.