Friday's Five - Teaching Responsibility

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Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best.  Then I ask you to share your thoughts in the comment section.  For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page. 



photo credit:  www.zeroatthebone.com

 As teachers, we know that we are preparing our students for the rest of their lives.  We want to teach them life skills in addition to content.  Among the most important life skills is responsibility.  Our students need to learn to be responsible.

Throughout history, many wise individuals have spoken and written about those with great power having increased responsibility.  How often in our classrooms do we preach to our students the importance of responsibility, but then refuse to allow them the power and autonomy to learn the skill?  Let's take a look at five ways we can help students learn to be responsible.

1. Let them work on real problems.  If a student is assigned an essay on homelessness and doesn't write it well (or at all), they get a bad grade.  The poor grade will not teach them responsibility.  Most kids don't really buy into our grading system.  If that same student is asked to work with a homeless shelter to increase awareness of the problem in the community, they see the real consequences of not doing their part.  They know that their effort and work is directly contributing to helping others.
2. Let them experience the rewards of their hard work.  Suppose in the first situation the student writes an amazing essay.  They get 100 on the top of their paper and that's the end of it.  They haven't learned anything about the value of being responsible.  There's no emotional reward other than the grade (which, again, doesn't mean a whole lot to most kids).  If they do a great job on the second task they feel the natural joy that comes authentically when one makes major contributions to a project. 
3. Allow kids the autonomy and creative control over their work.  Too often we expect kids to learn responsibility by completing 40 problems out of a textbook every night.  We tell them that it's their job to play school, listen to their teachers, and do what they are told.  If great responsibility comes with great power, then it would stand to reason that little power requires little responsibility.  Kids need to be empowered to learn.  Tell them, "If you understand how to add fractions, find a way to prove it to me by Friday.  If not, my door is open for extra help between now and then.  Those who do a good job will create video lessons for next year's class on Monday.  Those who don't will spend Monday with me re-learning."  That's the kind of task that empowers students and allows them to learn responsibility.
4. Model responsibility.  This one is pretty obvious, but if a teacher is constantly modeling behaviors that are unprofessional and irresponsible, it's tough to teach kids the skills they will need in life.  For many kids, we are the best role models they have.  We have great power in their lives, and our actions are watched very closely. 
5. Find ways for students to get positive feedback from multiple sources.  Sure, it's important to give students positive feedback when they act responsibly.  It's so much more powerful, however, when that feedback comes from multiple and unexpected sources.  I've seen kids who don't like school become engaged and excited to do their work because they received positive comments on a blog post they wrote.  I've seen students who have attendence problems come to school more often because the school janitor noticed when they showed up for 3 straight days and told them, "Good Job!" 

Now it's your turn.  How do you teach responsibility?  Do you have experiences that you can share with us?  Let us know in the comment section below, and please pass the post on to friends and colleagues via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Plurk so that we can hear their points of view as well.

Give Teachers the Autonomy to Be Great

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It's funny how things work sometimes.  I was sitting in a math curriculum meeting yesterday where we were trying to develop an action plan for transitioning from Pennsylvania's current standards to the Common Core Curriculum which will become law in 2013.  A group of elementary teachers and administrators from our district were debating the problem of having to balance great pedagogical practices like concept development, project based learning, and talking about math in the classroom versus the need to practice skills and teach standardized test taking strategies.  Not one person in the room was arguing that skill practice and test prep were what's best for our students, but several expressed that not focusing in these areas would lead to a drop in test scores.  I found myself thinking, "What if we didn't need to have this absurd argument?  What if we as teachers were trusted enough as professionals to actually focus on best teaching practices to just teach effectively?"

It was almost at that exact moment that I got an e-mail pointing out that a quote of mine was used in a Washington Post article by Vicki Davis entitled The Greatest Teacher Incentive:  The Freedom to Teach.  (If you are unfamiliar with Vicki, her Cool Cat Teacher Blog is amazingly informative and insightful, and one you should consider checking out.)

The discussion at the meeting and Vicki's article got me thinking about how different, and how great our schools would be if we gave teachers the professional autonomy they deserved.  What if, instead of blocking all social networking sites and sending the message that teachers cannot be trusted, we opened those sites up and encouraged teachers to network with other professionals to improve their craft?  What if, instead of handing teachers a scripted textbook teachers' manual and demanding that they follow every lesson, we challenged teachers to collaborate to create lessons that were better than the textbook?  And what if we then encouraged them to share those lessons with others?  What if, instead of devising policies to punish "bad" teachers and ensure that all are mediocre, we identified ways to help all teachers continually improve their teaching and devised policies that allowed teachers to be great?

You cannot make a logical argument that our education system wouldn't be greatly improved if those, and other changes to give teachers more professional discretion were made.  Autonomy is a great motivator.

Lately, many states and politicians have tried to use money as a motivational tool in the form of merit based pay.  I've seen studies that show how this type of reward system doesn't work, but I think the following example is a better way to show how much more motivational a move towards trusting teachers would be.

Imagine you had two friends who needed your help with something in which you both had the expertise to help and truly enjoyed doing.

When you go to help the first friend, they refuse to listen to your advice, even though you are more knowledgeable about the subject than they are.  Throughout the task, they bark orders at you, treat you like you are incapable of completing the task, and refuse to let you have access to some of the tools in the toolbox that you know would make the job easier.  They demand that you do it their way, and promise to give you a few bucks when the job is completed, but only if it is done completely correctly.

At the second friend's house, you are greeted warmly and feel thoroughly appreciated.  You are given the freedom to complete the task any way that you wish, and your friend offers assist you in any way that they can.  Despite the fact that you sometimes run into difficulties, your friend encourages you by telling you that they trust your ability in this area, and they have confidence that you will overcome any challenges.  Your friend never offers you money for helping.

In which scenario would you be more motivated?  In which do you think you would do a better job?

Unfortunately, many public educators feel like they are stuck reliving the first scenario again and again.  There is a serious lack of morale among teachers, and it's having an effect on the next generation.  We want students to learn creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration to excel in the 21st Century workplace, but we punish teachers for being creative, enforce policies that discourage critical thinking, and block the tools that would allow teachers to collaborate.  How can we realistically expect teachers to teach their students these skills in that environment?  Is it really a shock that we are falling behind other countries?

It's time to start encouraging teachers to be more than "proficient."  It's time to start giving them the professional autonomy that they deserve.  If we do that, our students and communities will benefit.  If we do that, we could be great.

Different Expectations

I'm sure most teachers have had some variation of this experience:

It's time to review a homework assignment from the previous night.  One student has nothing but a blank paper.  When you ask that student for his/her homework, he/she says, "I didn't know how to do this."  You then respond with something like, "I can't give you credit because you made no attempt.  I expect you to at least try."

We expect our students to try things that are difficult.  We understand that learning takes effort at times, is sometimes difficult, and requires a certain level of perseverance.

Other times, we hear this:

I didn't have time to do my homework last night because I had to ___________________ (go to soccer practice, go shopping with mom, wash my hair, etc.)

We expect our students to make their job as a student a priority.  Spending time on other activities instead of homework is unacceptable.

Do we have the same expectations of ourselves?  

Most teachers acknowledge that today's student will graduate into a world where information is stored and accessed on-line.  Most agree that our student's jobs in the future will require the use of new technologies to video conference, collaborate with others in distant locations, quickly judge the validity of a great deal of information in short periods of time, and perform many other "21st century tasks."  Those who don't recognize these facts are either egregiously uninformed or delusional that the 1950's are going to make a comeback.  

Alek Shresta/tigweb.org

If we are truly preparing our students for the world in which they will live, our schools should incorporate the same technologies mentioned above.  Too often, they don't.  Even when students are able to use a computer in our classrooms, too often it is for standardized test preparation or as some form of digital babysitting where they spend a period playing an "educational" game that requires little thinking.  A look at a 2009 study by the National Center for Educational Statistics, Teachers’ Use of Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools, shows how lacking we are.  85% of our high school classrooms never use videoconferencing.  66% of our high school teachers don't even have their students use a computer on a regular basis.  

I've heard two common responses from teachers when they discuss why they don't learn to use technology to teach the 21st century skills our students will need in their classrooms:  "I don't know how" and "There's no time."  If we don't accept these excuses from our students, why do we accept them from ourselves?  Isn't it our job to learn?