In This Issue:
1. Developing character strengths that support democracy
2. Preparing students for an uncertain future
3. More evidence of the ineffectiveness of annual performance evaluations
4. A plea for reconnecting with the human and physical world
5. Beyond the “science of reading”
6. Focusing on the texts students read in ELA classes
7. Helping students make wise and ethical use of their cellphones
Quotes of the Week
“An optimist who worries a lot.”
Madeleine Albright’s self-description in Peter Baker’s April 28, 2022 New York Times remembrance, “Memorial Service for Albright Resonates at a Time of War”
“One does not need to be a profound scholar to be open minded, nor a keen academician to engage in an assiduous pursuit of truth.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (quoted in item #1)
“Good teaching, effective teaching, is not just about using whatever science says ‘usually’ works best. It is all about finding out what works best for the individual child and the group of children in front of you.”
Richard Allington in “Ideology Is Still Trumping Evidence” in Phi Delta Kappan, February 2005 (see Memo 75 for a summary)
“Young people [entering college] need someone to say to them, ‘Here are the courses you need to take, here’s how to afford college, here’s how to deal with a roommate who’s driving you nuts, here’s how to deal with a professor who doesn’t care whether you pass or fail.’ When institutions can create support systems that help kids feel like they belong and help them negotiate the bureaucracy, dropout rates are much lower. But when there are budget cuts, those supports tend to be the first thing that goes away.”
Paul Tough in “Paul Tough on Fixing Higher Education’s Broken System” in
Educational Leadership, May 2022 (Vol. 79, #8, pp. 12-16)
“Students don’t learn integrity through osmosis; it must be intentionally taught, and we have to work at it.”
Michele Borba (see item #2)
“We are made to enjoy the physical presence of other human beings. We are made to enjoy
rainstorms or sunshine or walks in the woods. We are made to enjoy touchable things. We
cannot escape or overcome this need through technology. Our attempts to do so go against the grain of our deepest human needs and longings.”
Tish Harrison Warren (see item #4)
“Ultimately, young people must learn how to live well in the digital world when adults are not around.”
Tom Harrison (see item #7)
“For millions, the annual performance review is akin to going to a bad dentist: before you go, you dread it; while you’re there, it’s painful; after it’s done, nothing is fixed.”
Marcus Buckingham (see item #3)
“Nothing new in twenty twenty-two.”
Teachers’ plea in a Texas district to pause new initiatives in the months ahead
1. Developing Character Strengths That Support Democracy
In this article in School Administrator, Jason Baehr (Loyola Marymount University) describes nine virtues he believes support intellectual growth and academic success (each is followed by a slogan to guide young people as they develop the virtues):
• Necessary to get the learning process started and headed in the right direction:
- Curiosity – A disposition to wonder, ponder, and ask why; a thirst for understanding and a desire to explore – Ask questions
- Autonomy – A capacity for active, self-directed thinking; an ability to reason for oneself – Think for yourself
- Humility – A willingness to own one’s intellectual limitations and mistakes and be unconcerned with intellectual status or prestige – Admit what you don’t know
• Necessary to execute well and keep the learning process on track:
- Attentiveness – A readiness to be personally present in the learning process, keep distractions at bay, and notice important details – Look and listen
- Carefulness – A disposition to notice and avoid intellectual pitfalls and mistakes and strive for accuracy – Get it right
- Thoroughness – A willingness to seek and provide explanations, be unsatisfied with mere appearances or easy answers, and probe for deeper meaning and understanding – Go deep
• Necessary to overcome familiar obstacles to learning:
- Open-mindedness – An ability to move between diverse perspectives and give a fair and honest hearing to competing viewpoints – Think outside the box
- Courage – A readiness to persist in thinking or communicating in the face of fear, embarrassment, or failure – Take risks
- Tenacity – A willingness to embrace intellectual challenges, keep one’s eyes on the prize, and not give up – Embrace struggle
Baehr distinguishes these virtues from innate gifts. “Naturally ‘smart’ people can be intellectually lazy, careless, or arrogant,” he says. “Persons of average natural intelligence can be admirably inquisitive, careful, honest, open, and fair in their thinking.” As Martin Luther King Jr. once observed: “One does not need to be a profound scholar to be open minded, nor a keen academician to engage in an assiduous pursuit of truth.”
How can a school teach the nine virtues with so many other competing agendas? Baehr describes how he and others drew on ideas from Project Zero at Harvard to plan and launch a middle school in Long Beach, California. The Intellectual Virtues Academy opened in 2013 and is now a successful, diverse school with 250 students. The key has been embedding the nine virtues in all aspects of the school so students have frequent and well-supported opportunities to put them into practice. This involves:
- A weekly advisory program;
- Restorative circles;
- Widespread use of “thinking routines;”
- Adults modeling the virtues;
- “Character conferences” with students, parents, and teachers;
- Collaborative decision-making;
- Growth-focused professional development;
- An annual staff retreat.
The bigger goal is preparing students to be responsible adults in a contentious time. “Perhaps now more than ever,” says Baehr, “the demands of good citizenship extend not merely to how we behave in the public square, but also to how we think, reason, acquire evidence, assess arguments, and respond to people with whom we disagree… From the standpoint of our respective filter bubbles and epistemic cocoons, our political adversaries can appear out of their minds, or worse. This is not a recipe for healthy democracy.”
Hence the critical importance of schools and families instilling these character strengths in all students.
“Intellectual Virtues and the Formation of Good Citizens” by Jason Baehr in School Administrator, May 2022 (Vol. 79, #5, pp. 34-37); Baehr is at [email protected]; Baehr’s 2021 book: Deep in Thought: A Practical Guide to Teaching for Intellectual Virtues (Harvard Education Press)
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2. Preparing Students for an Uncertain Future
(Originally titled “Future-Proofing Students”)
When they’re adults, more than half of today’s students will work in jobs that don’t yet
exist, says author/psychologist Michele Borba in this Educational Leadership article. Her research has identified seven skillsets that are vital to success in this ever-changing world. “These strengths are not fixed nor based on scores, IQs, or ZIP codes,” says Borba, “but teachable abilities that can be woven into daily lessons and help prepare kids for life.” Here are the strengths, each with several associated abilities:
• Self-confidence: Self-awareness, strength awareness, finding purpose – “Confidence is the quiet understanding of ‘who I am’ that nurtures inner assuredness and appreciation of one’s unique strengths and interests,” says Borba, “as well as areas in need of improvement.” Schools can develop self-confidence by having students keep digital portfolios of their learning progress and scheduling “genius hours” to encourage students to get deeply involved in a particular area of interest.
• Empathy: Emotional literacy, perspective taking, empathic concern – “Empathy allows us to feel with and understand others,” says Borba, “setting us apart from the machines we create. Its cultivation will be crucial to successfully navigating life in a world dominated by artificial intelligence and augmented reality.” Students can get better at perspective-taking through cooperative learning activities, retelling stories from the point of view of different characters, or acting out a different way of seeing a historical or current event.
• Self-control: Attentive focus, self-management, healthy decision-making – Many young people can’t go more than two minutes without checking their devices, so self-control is a key growth area. Schools can help students set limits and teach mindfulness, meditation, and yoga.
• Integrity: Moral awareness, moral identity, ethical thinking – “Students don’t learn integrity through osmosis,” says Borba; “it must be intentionally taught, and we have to work at it.” Studies show that despite expressing self-satisfaction with their ethical standards and conduct, 57 percent of teenagers agree with the statement, “Successful people do what they have to do to win, even if it involves cheating.” Teachers can lead ethically focused discussions about books like The Outsiders and foster moral consciousness through service projects addressing issues like climate change and income disparities.
• Curiosity: Curious mindset, creative problem-solving, divergent thinking – “If adversity strikes,” says Borba, “this strength helps kids stay open to possibilities and find solutions.” Curiosity is an essential skill in a rapidly evolving job market. Teachers can nurture it by asking provocative open-ended questions, designing lessons that make students pause and wonder, scheduling innovation days where teams can explore topics of interest, and providing time to tinker in maker spaces.
• Perseverance: Growth mindset, goal setting, learning from failure – “Students who attribute gains to their inner drive are more creative and resilient than those who think they have no control over outcomes,” says Borba. Schools need to temper parents’ overprotective tendencies; for example, a school that forbids parents, starting in third grade, from escorting children to their classrooms and dropping off forgotten assignments or nonessential items. Schools also need to cut back on extrinsic rewards like trophies and stickers, foster an “I got this” attitude to challenging situations, and teach students to set goals and track progress.
• Optimism: Optimistic thinking, assertive communication, hope – One in three high-school students report persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, reported a recent study, and instant access to disturbing news is making the world seem volatile and scary. Fortunately, research has shown that explicit, skillful teaching of optimism protects against depression, increases engagement and resilience, and boosts learning and work productivity. In their morning announcements, principals can highlight stories about young people who made a difference; schools can play video clips on hallway screens of inspiring local and national stories; and service projects can give students a chance to make a difference, however small.
“Our moral obligation,” Borba concludes, “is to equip this generation with the content and abilities they will need to handle an unpredictable future and thrive. Doing so may be our most important educational task.”
“Future-Proofing Students” by Michele Borba in Educational Leadership, May 2022 (Vol. 79, #8, pp. 18-23); Borba’s book is Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021)
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3. More Evidence on the Ineffectiveness of Annual Performance Evaluations
“For millions,” says Marcus Buckingham (ADP Research Institute) in this Wall Street Journal article, “the annual performance review is akin to going to a bad dentist: before you go, you dread it; while you’re there, it’s painful; after it’s done, nothing is fixed.” Buckingham cites a 2020 Gallup finding that 86 percent of employees believe their annual performance reviews are not accurate, and a 2018 Adobe study that found 22 percent of office workers burst into tears during their evaluations.
Despite evidence like this, comprehensive annual reviews are still a fixture in most organizations, including schools. Buckingham believes there are three design flaws in the traditional process:
• They are infrequent. “Work happens in a continuing flow,” he says, “hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week. You, the worker, experience successes and joy and struggles and frustrations, in this flow – and you want to talk to someone about it in the moment, when it’s still vivid and fresh in your and your manager’s mind.” Little wonder that people are anxious going into a year-end evaluation: they can’t remember all the details of the year, and yet this is when they discuss and are judged on the totality of their work.
• Annual reviews are dehumanizing. Buckingham describes a hard-working, high-performing employee in a California real estate company who was given a 3 on a 7-point scale in her annual evaluation meeting (1 is high and 7 is low). When she pointed out that her work had been cited for excellence in a study just a month earlier, her boss said the forced-curve worked against her: “Look, we would like to have given you a 2, but we’ve run out of 2s. Perhaps you can just think of yourself as a 2.” The woman was so demoralized she wanted to quit.
• Annual evaluations are irrelevant to real-world performance. As practiced in the business world, a once-a-year review “pays no attention whatsoever to the unique loves, loathings, passions, and strengths of each worker,” says Buckingham. “All the really meaty details that a manager might want to explore to help a worker get better at their job are missing from the annual review.” The focus is on whether they “hit their goals” and what that means for their overall rating.
“The annual review should be dead,” concludes Buckingham, along with several other ineffective personnel practices from the 1980s and 90s – but they live on, even in innovative Silicon Valley tech companies. Bosses who use this outdated methodology shouldn’t be surprised at high employee turnover.
The solution is quite simple, says Buckingham: “Split the annual review in two: performance measurement and performance development.” Measurement happens once a year, summing up overall work quality – but not in a number, and without the forced curve. Development happens throughout the year in frequent 15-minute check-in meetings in which the manager asks:
- What did you really love doing last week, and what did you hate?
- What are your priorities this week and how can I help?
“These check-ins aren’t for delivering feedback,” says Buckingham. “Workers want attention, not feedback, and mostly attention on where they’ve shown glimpses of something good, and how they might show more of them.” A large company that adopted this approach reported a 77 percent increase in employee engagement, commitment, and excitement and a 67 percent reduction in first-year turnover.
“When we humans get this sort of frequent, light-touch, in-the-moment attention on what we love to do and how to do more of it,” says Buckingham, “we stay connected, and we stay productive. When we don’t, we up and quit.”
“Annual Reviews Are a Terrible Way to Evaluate Employees” by Marcus Buckingham in The Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2022
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4. A Plea for Reconnecting with the Human and Physical World
In this New York Times article, author and Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren says digital devices are “changing our relationship with materiality – both the world of nature and of human relationships… Social media in particular trains us to notice that which is large, loud, urgent, trending, and distant, and to therefore miss the small, quiet importance of our proximate and limited, embodied lives.”
Warren is especially concerned that young people are spending less time playing outdoors, hanging out with friends, engaging in youth sports, dating, and getting their driver’s license, and spending more time on electronic devices (an average of 7-1/2 hours a day), having romantic relationships with fictional characters, and feeling lonely.
“We are made to enjoy the physical presence of other human beings,” says Warren. “We are made to enjoy rainstorms or sunshine or walks in the woods. We are made to enjoy touchable things. We cannot escape or overcome this need through technology. Our attempts to do so go against the grain of our deepest human needs and longings… We have to be cautious and wise about introducing devices into our lives that fundamentally change how humans have interacted since time immemorial.”
“Go watch the rain for 10 minutes,” Warren urges. “Go on a walk with a friend. Get off social media and meet one neighbor. Keep your kids offline. Put your hands in the dirt. Play an instrument instead of a video game. Turn off your smartphone and have dinner with people around a table. Search for beauty and goodness in the material world, and there, find joy.”
“We’re in a Loneliness Crisis. Another Reason to Get Off Our Phones” by Tish Harrison Warren in The New York Times, May 2, 2022
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5. Beyond the “Science of Reading”
In this Phi Delta Kappan article Leah Durán (University of Arizona/Tucson) and Michiko Hikida (Ohio State University) put the current advocacy for increased emphasis on phonics and other aspects of early literacy instruction in historical perspective:
- In the 1950s, Rudolf Flesch’s bestselling Why Johnny Can’t Read said the lack of phonics in public schools had created a national security crisis.
- In the 1960s, Jeanne Chall led a “great debate” between code- and meaning-focused instruction.
- In the late 1980s and 90s, the argument resumed, with phonics warring with whole language (the 1983 A Nation At Risk report claimed that a decline in phonics instruction had produced a dramatic drop in SAT scores).
- In recent years, the debate has flared up again, this time with “scientifically based reading research” vying with “balanced reading instruction.” Over the last five years, the “science of reading” approach has been mandated in elementary schools and teacher preparation programs across the U.S.; as of 2021, 46 states and the District of Columbia have passed early literacy laws, most requiring instruction based on the science of reading approach.
The common factor in all four eras has been the contention that elementary schools need to get back to basics, embrace rigorous, code-based teaching, and reject “unscientific” approaches.
Durán and Hikida believe there isn’t now, nor has there been historically, “a pedagogical crisis specific to literacy. Rather, what we see is an ongoing crisis of equity that cuts across all domains of children’s opportunities to learn.” They cite evidence that back-to-basics, letter-sound correspondence reading instruction has been more common in under-resourced schools serving children who have been labeled “poor readers,” and those students have been less likely to have balanced literacy instruction and engage with complex ideas.
The Reading First initiative from 2000 to 2008 invested $6 billion in Title I schools, requiring them to use systematic and explicit instruction in phonics and other foundational skills and forbidding whole language or balanced literacy. Subsequent research found that Reading First did not improve students’ reading comprehension; in some cases, reading achievement actually declined. “Improving phonics-based instruction is, in fact, quite beneficial for many students,” say Durán and Hikida. “However, both large- and small-scale studies from the Reading First era suggest that it is a mistake to assume that a lack of phonics instruction is the primary cause of low literacy rates in the U.S. or that more phonics instruction will solve the problem.”
So what is the real cause? Durán and Hikida describe a “right to literacy” lawsuit brought by a group of Detroit students deeply unhappy with their schools’ failure to teach them how to read. They point to a list of causes: crowded classrooms, aging school buildings, inadequate supplies, high staff turnover, a number of uncertified teachers, and long-term substitutes. The suit is not just about reading: student achievement in math, social studies, and science was just as troubling. “It’s absurd,” say the authors, “to insist that their experience of learning to read would have been adequate if only their teachers had chosen a different instructional model… And yet, we’re supposed to blame our ‘reading crisis’ on balanced literacy?”
It’s been argued that those who focus on poverty or racism are deflecting attention from the need to improve reading instruction. “We disagree,” say Durán and Hikida. “To be sure, pedagogy and instruction matter, and literacy researchers should continue to improve the field’s understanding of what teaching approaches work best, for which students, and under what circumstances, and to share this knowledge as part of teacher preparation and development.” For starters, there’s the research on the importance of children’s content knowledge in literacy development, which suggests that it’s been a big mistake for schools to cut back on science and social studies in hopes of boosting reading test scores.
But embracing insights like these doesn’t mean choosing a side in the long-running reading wars. “We can perhaps escape getting bogged down in endless ‘reading wars,’” say Durán and Hikida, “by thinking of improvements in our understanding of reading pedagogy as incremental progress rather than pendulum swings. By framing reading pedagogy and research in terms of two opposing sides, we lose the possibilities of ‘both/and’: teachers can address meaning and code, knowledge and skills. There is nothing unscientific about recognizing this complexity.”
Clearly the root causes of low reading scores need to be addressed, say Durán and Hikida: “The quality and nature of instruction that students receive matters, but instruction is inseparable from other structural dimensions of schooling…” including teacher recruitment, turnover, and experience, leadership, professional development, curriculum resources, building conditions, and students’ time on task. Dysfunctional schools cause good teachers to flee and prevent highly qualified educators from signing on.
“Changes in reading pedagogy or curriculum alone,” say the authors, “cannot solve (and have not solved) these kinds of structural problems that prevent many children from learning to read well. The ‘reading wars’ likely capture our collective attention because they promise an easy, inexpensive solution to complex, persistent problems.” They are what Lilia Bartolomé has called a “methods fetish” – the idea that a technical fix can guarantee student learning. “If we can learn anything from decades of debate,” conclude Durán and Hikida, “it is that there is no single magic (or scientific) technique that can solve the most intractable problem of our educational system… Fixing reading education is not solely a matter of research or implementation at the classroom level; it is also a matter of political will.”
“Making Sense of Reading’s Forever Wars” by Leah Durán and Michiko Hikida in Phi Delta Kappan, May 2022 (Vol. 103, #8, pp. 14-19); the authors are at [email protected] and [email protected].
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6. Focusing on the Texts Students Read in ELA Classrooms
In this Phi Delta Kappan article, Kristin Conradi Smith (William and Mary) and Elfrieda Hiebert (TextProject) say the recent “science of reading” focus on decoding in the primary grades is warranted, but that’s the how of reading instruction. Conradi Smith and Hiebert believe we also need to pay attention to what students are reading. “The texts we choose to use,” they say, “play central roles in students’ development as readers and in their understanding of the world, as well as themselves.” The authors share the implications of recent research on four aspects of the texts used in K-12 classrooms:
• Text complexity – For students to read with understanding, they need to recognize “the vast majority of the words in a text automatically and meaningfully,” say Conradi Smith and Hiebert. “And once students become automatic in recognizing the majority of words in a text, they should move on to progressively more challenging texts that provide new vocabulary and ideas, which are the basis for the background knowledge that underlies proficient reading.” An effective strategy for accelerating reading proficiency, especially for students who are struggling, is to use topically connected texts across the curriculum on a high-interest topic – for example, Egyptian mummies.
• Narrative and informational texts – Through the end of the 1900s, narrative texts (stories) were dominant in elementary ELA classrooms; since then, informational texts have taken on an equal role. This shift was the result of research on the role of background knowledge, which, we now understand, “is both a cause and a consequence of reading comprehension,” say Conradi Smith and Hiebert. “It is a cause in that what readers know about a text – insights about text structures, author styles and views, vocabulary, and topic – influences comprehension. It is a consequence in that readers extend their knowledge of their social and natural worlds through the texts they read.” As with text complexity, using texts on a related topic in reading, social studies, science, or the arts is a good way to simultaneously build knowledge and reading proficiency.
• Text format – Many texts are now available on computers, tablets, and audio versions as well as print. However, say Conradi Smith and Hiebert, “Evidence broadly suggests that reading on paper, rather than on screens, promotes better comprehension.” This has to do with students’ reading habits and the omnipresence of distractions on screens. “We’re not saying to pull the plug on the tablets!” say the authors. “Sometimes we have to use digital texts out of necessity, convenience, or affordability.” In such cases, they suggest pairing digital texts with print and graphic organizers, providing metacognitive supports, and having students read to each other in pairs, stopping periodically to summarize and discuss. It’s also helpful for English language learners to listen to texts while reading a print version.
• Diversity of texts – The question is whether texts include complex characters of different races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, and genders. Despite some progress, say Conradi Smith and Hiebert, “the texts many students encounter in school, overall, tend to lack diversity.” The authors suggest that teachers take stock of the materials they’re currently using – textbooks, worksheets, what’s read aloud, classroom and school library collections – and diversify what students are exposed to. Students should see characters with whom they can identify, feel affirmed by what they see and read in texts, and broaden and change their perceptions and beliefs about cultures different from their own.
“What Does the Research Say About the Texts We Use in Elementary School?” by Kristin Conradi Smith and Elfrieda Hiebert in Phi Delta Kappan, May 2022 (Vol. 103, #8, pp. 8-13); the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
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7. Helping Students Make Wise and Ethical Use of their Cellphones
In this Education Week article, Tom Harrison (University of Birmingham, UK) says when he bought his 11-year-old daughter her first cellphone, he set limits on content and hours. Rules seemed necessary for a tween starting off with a device of her own, but the kid quickly discovered how to bypass most of them. “The score at this point,” says Harrison: “Digital native 1, digital immigrant 0.”
So he went back to the drawing board, did some research, and decided that if his daughter and other young people are to thrive, not just survive, in the digital wilderness, they need to learn character- and values-based strategies. Here’s his advice for schools:
• Establish ground rules but don’t ban cellphones. “Forbidding phones on school grounds is a battle you’ll never win,” says Harrison, “but you can make it very clear when students can and can’t use them” – for example, in ways that authentically support learning.
• Set an imperfect example. Students will call teachers out if there’s a double standard, but “you don’t need to be a perfect moral exemplar,” says Harrison. “Talk about your relationship with your phone, how you might struggle to stop ‘doomscrolling,’ or when you have sent a message on social media that you discovered accidentally hurt others. In these discussions, students will come to better understand both the risks and opportunities of living in the digital age.”
• Listen, then advise. Students will always be ahead of parents and educators with cutting-edge apps and technology. The trick for adults is to not be too judgmental, get kids to open up about what they’re seeing and doing, and broach the subjects of integrity, resilience, and kindness.
• Champion character. “Ultimately,” says Harrison, “young people must learn how to live well in the digital world when adults are not around. We best judge character by actions when no one is watching… Help them negotiate online moral dilemmas and provide them with language, ideas, and inspiration to help them reflect on their online interactions through a character lens.”
Since shifting to this approach with his daughter, Harrison reports that her relationship with her cellphone and with her parents has flourished. “Every day, there are ups and downs,” he says, “but I can see she is now on the path to becoming digitally wise – making independent and good choices when online.”
“4 Strategies to Help Students Manage Cellphone Use in School” by Tom Harrison in Education Week, May 4, 2022; Harrison can be reached at [email protected].
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