MORE LEARNING IN LIVE EVENTS

In workshops and presentations on Tapping Student Effort and Learning Styles, I often discuss the power of teachers using Live Events to deepen student motivation and effort. In Live Events, most learning style preferences are naturally present.

Live Events are often project based learning activities where the outcome of the event has a real consequence. A sophisticated simulation can include all the elements of a live event with the exception of real consequence.

Simulation: Students take part in the stock market game. Groups invest a pretend $10,000 and buy and sell across a semester, declaring a winner at the end of the term.

Live Event: Each student in the Freshman Class contributes $25 to a fund that is invested in the stock market after in depth study and consensus decision making. Students track their progress (or loss) during their high school career, cashing out to off set the cost of the senior prom.

Another example of a Live Event was in the January 6th posting, Learning in Live Events, where students at a Wisconsin school did Christmas for poverty stricken children.

The following diagram illustrates the live event elements that positively impact student learning.




A recent article appearing online at Edutopia presents a great live event example.
Philips Sala and Burton Academic High School has an Academy of Finance with its very own Volunteer Income Tax Assistance site. The VITA program, a partnership between the Internal Revenue Service and the nonprofit organization United Way, recruits volunteers to become certified tax preparers as a free service to households earning less than $38,000 a year. Burton’s VITA site is staffed by the high school students themselves.1

Here is how I labeled each element of a Live Event in these students’ experience.
Relevance and Real Environment
"What I love about this process is that it gets kids out of the classroom into a real environment where they can apply what they've learned." "We talk in class about what it means to be professional. We talk about sales tax, interest, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). But to actually be in an office and assist someone they've never met before, someone who is looking to them as professionals to help prepare their taxes -- all of a sudden, it feels much more real for students."
Process Skills
Not only are they staying awake, but they're grappling with the ins and outs of basic tax returns, learning about running a small business, working collaboratively in teams on complex problems, building speaking skills and self-confidence, and honing multiple academic fundamentals -- including math, computer, and literacy skills -- all in a real-world, high-stakes context.
Multi Sensory
"It's great to learn skills, but it's even better to apply them to help out your neighbors and give back to the community," Glancing at a classroom filled with students who have the poise of professionals and who speak with the urgency of those engaged in a very real task, as well as clients who look as though they know they're in capable hands.
Emotion
"It's a little nerve-wracking," "You get kind of tense because you don't want to mess anything up by not giving people enough money or giving them too much."
Real Consequence
"On a test, there's no real difference between a 75 percent and a 95 percent. But if someone's sitting across from you, and you're talking about their taxes, you want to get 100 percent! You don't want to make any mistakes."

For more information on Live Event Learning, go to The National Educator Program to see how they work with Academies and Small Learning Communities.


1 Edutopia, Financial Aides: Teens Become Tax Preparers A high school opens a tax office, and students run the show by Sara Bernard, 2008

RESPONDING TO RESISTANCE

In the last two postings, Resistance in Coaching Conferences and Using Questions in Coaching Conferences, I’ve explored the need to uncover agendas and sometimes resistance before moving to problem solving in coaching conferences. In this post we will explore responding to resistance that has been identified. Paraphrasing, active listening, is a good step to confirm the resistance you believe you are hearing. In this scenario,

A fifth grade teacher tells you that she believes reading aloud is an important component of reading workshop time, but she doesn’t use it often because the students don’t listen during the reading. They fidget and are seldom able to respond to questions she asks.

You might paraphrase...

The teachers thinking:

You feel that it’s wasting time to read aloud with them.
You’d like to motivate them to listen.

The teachers emotions:

You’re upset with the students behavior.
You are worried their behavior could get worst if you keep
doing the read aloud.

I find it helpful to identify resistance as coming from three sources: ego (pride), intellect(brain) and emotions (feelings). Then, select a matching response.

Pride resistance- respond with approval statements
Emotion resistance- respond with empathy statements
Intellect resistance- respond with supporting statements

Approval-- In most cases, I look to provide some approval as soon as possible within the conference.
It is so great to hear your understanding of the value of the read aloud. Many intermediate and middle level teachers assume it is just for use with younger students.
Your desire to find a way to make this work shows a real commitment to your students.

Empathy-- It is annoying to work hard and not see students respond. When we find the right mix of motivation and listening skill development your students’ responses will become your reward.
When you feel that you don’t have control, it is scary. Sometimes perseverance is the key.

Support--You are right that there is no time to waste, especially this time of year. What benefits of the read aloud are most important to your students?
Changing student behavior is hard work; motivating listen, reading, and thinking behaviors can have very long term payoffs for your students.

Notice in the diagram on resistance, that sometimes all three areas are present at once. The more resistance present the slower the coach needs to go, fighting the temptation to offer suggestions to end the conference sooner.

For greater study of verbal skills for working with agenda and resistance, see PLS course Building Communication and Team Building.

USING QUESTIONS IN COACHING CONFERENCES

In last week’s posting, I described the process of uncovering agenda and working with any resistance before moving into problem solving conversations. I was asked in a recent coaches’ training session to model my thinking out loud about questions as I applied it to a coaching scenario. Here is the scenario, my thinking and the questions I created. I have labeled the questions from Performance Learning Systems training called Questions for Life. If you are unfamiliar with Questions for life, drop me an email and I’ll forward the model to you.(sbarkley@plsweb.com )

Scenario

• A fifth grade teacher tells you that she believes reading aloud is an important component of reading workshop time, but she doesn’t use it often because the students don’t listen during the reading. They fidget and are seldom able to respond to questions she asks.

My thinking :

I thought that I’d want to tackle this in two steps. First would be questions to uncover the teacher’s understanding of reading aloud and her commitment to wanting to make reading aloud effective. Second would be uncovering a process to start working on changing the reading aloud student outcome.

Step 1 Questions:

What benefits do you see from using reading aloud? Analysis
Which of these benefits is of most important to your students? Appraisal

Are these benefits important to all your students or more important to some? Same/Different
How much do you want to invest in making reading aloud lessons work effectively?

Why? Evaluation

My Thinking:

If these questions uncover an understanding of the read aloud strategy and a commitment of the teacher to want it to work, I’d proceed with a problem solving approach.
If it did not, I’d explore other areas or interest or ways to increase teacher understanding and commitment.

Assuming understanding and commitment ...
Step 2 Questions:

Pick a lesson or activity (any content area) where you’ve seen your students listen well.
Describe what you saw. Perception
Identify another 6 times you’ve seen that. Analysis

What is common about those times? Induction

What is the critical issue to focus on… improving our students listening skills or motivating your students to use the listening skills they possess? Why? Evaluation

If I were to model a read aloud lesson with your students, what would you recommend I pay particular attention to when planning? Idea


My thinking: Hopefully, the teacher would invite me to do the modeling using her advice.
If that happened, I would ask the teacher to observe and collect the following data:

Question:
Where did you see the students listening the same as in previous lessons, less than in previous lessons, more than in previous lessons? Analysis

My thinking: This modeling and data collection would set the stage for repeated models, experimentation, and hopefully an invitation for the coach to observe the students as the teacher experimented.

RESISTANCE IN COACHING CONFERENCES

In coach’s training, I often present a structure for planning and reflecting on conferences that are focused on bringing about change:
Agenda
Resistance
Problem Solving

First, identifying the teacher’s agenda (What are the emotions and thinking behind the teacher’s actions?). Often as the agenda is revealed, resistance is uncovered. It is then critical to work through the resistance before looking for solutions. A common mistake of coaches is to offer solutions or options when the teacher isn’t really ready to explore them.
Here is a scenario I recently received from a Student Engagement Coach:
Day One: The teacher asks if I know of a story that would fit in with her Black History Unit. I look at one and ask her if it is too long. We think about it, and then she suggests another story that I know well. I say,"Yes, that would be a great story. That would be a great vehicle for a lesson on inference". She looks at me in a questioning way. I say, "You could do this activity that is described in The Readers Handbook." I show her the "during reading" activity that uses two column notes. She would have to find quotes from the story that infer something about the characters, plot, setting, etc. Students would have them on the left side of the paper, and on the right side students explain what they inferred. She said it looked like too much and the students will not like stopping as they read to do the activity. I said that perhaps four quotes would be enough. Then, I showed her another activity from the book that would be a great "after reading "activity. Both activities are simple and would enhance any class discussion following the reading. Students were to read in pairs.
Day Two; I visit the class to watch the students during this reading activity. They are reading in pairs. They do not have the quotes, nor do they have the after reading activity. I talked to the teacher about this. Her response was that she did not have time to put the quotes on an overhead or on a worksheet. She did have the quotes selected. She said they would go over the quotes the next day.
She seemed to lack understanding of the need to teach the standards and not just entertain the students with a good story. The lesson was designed so the students would do the work and learning.
I had explained to her the day before the importance of having them understand the inference as they read so they could better understand the story. Doing the activity later reduces the impact. Doing the work the next day takes away the student's chance to interact with the story on the higher level.
Was this passive aggressive behavior? Did she not have time? Why didn't she make time?

I had the opportunity to meet with the coach who sent me this scenario. As we began to talk and she began to reflect, the realization of her doing an “end run” of the resistance of the teacher emerged. The teacher gave several signs of resistance that the coach could have explored.
The first was nonverbal, “She looked at me in a questioning way". This was a good spot for a paraphrase,”That doesn’t make sense for you”. However the teacher responds, the coach knows more of her thinking.”
Another spot, the teacher says, "That looks like too much". The coach goes to problem solving saying,”just four could work”. Here is a spot where some questions might work to uncover thinking/resistance.
"Tell me more" or "What makes it too much?".
Next time you feel resistance in a coaching conference look to explore it. It may take longer but it will increase the odds that change really will occur.

LEARNING WHILE TEACHING

I recently attended the Association for the Advancement of International Education 42nd Annual Conference in NYC. Most of the attendees were administrators at International Schools around the world.

I participated in a session conducted by Stacey Rainey, who works with Microsoft Corporation and has responsibility for the Microsoft School of the Future in Philadelphia. She presented the processes and discoveries coming from this joint project between Microsoft and the Philadelphia City Schools. Students at the school focus on projects that have Pennsylvania Standards embedded. Tour the school and learn much more at www.Microsoft.com/education/sof.

One very interesting offering on this site is the Education Competency Wheel. Under six qualities that are identified as needed by school leaders to help schools succeed in the 21st century are 37 educational competencies. For each competency you will find a proficiency rubric, essential questions, interview questions to identify the presence of the competency in candidates for positions, ways to practice and learn the competency on the job and recommended readings about the competency.

One competency that particularly caught my attention was “Learning on the Fly”.

“Learns quickly when facing new problems; analyzes both successes and failures for clues to improvement: experiments and will try anything to find solutions; enjoys the challenge of unfamiliar tasks.”

I immediately thought that peer coaching would be a natural tool for the development and practice of “learning on the fly”. The following two suggestions in the learning on the job section reinforced my thinking.

Use experts: Seek out expert(s) in your area, and find out how they think and problem-solve. Ask what key questions they apply when solving problems.
Use others: Employ others with diverse backgrounds to help analyze the situation. Come up with questions and discuss them.

Get feedback from those in authority. Communicate that you are open to constructive criticism and are willing to work on issues they view as important.
Be open and non-defensive when others offer feedback. Ask for examples and details, and take notes.
Learn from mistakes. Focus on "why" more than "what." Don't avoid similar situations for fear of repeating mistakes, but learn and try again. Don't repeat what went wrong more diligently, but try something new. Look for patterns that may be causing the problem.

I have often suggested that school leaders need to be lead learners. Collegial staff relationships like vertical teams and professional learning communities can provide the support for teachers and administrators learning “on the fly”.