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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>The following is an excerpt from \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24612228-mission-high\">Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Make It Triumph\u003c/a>, describing the challenges of Pirette McKamey, a teacher at Mission High School in San Francisco. 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It was that pride in her intellect that gave her the fortitude and resilience to cut through many racial stereotypes and negative myths as she made her way through high school and then Boston University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some students gather enough confidence from their teachers, family, mentors, and peers to succeed in spite of subtle and overt social cues that signal the perceived intellectual inferiority of black people. But too many African American students that McKamey encounters fall off the cliff. They internalize the damaging feeling of inferiority that young adults pick up even from the most casual encounters in and out of the classroom. Some are explicit demands for silence directed at black students. Others are more subtle rejections: averted gazes, hesitations, and pauses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jesmyn first met McKamey four years ago, when she walked into a night class to fix an F she had received in English. The first thing Jesmyn declared—with much conviction—was that she wasn’t good at school. The second statement she made was that she was a bad writer. Her teacher listened patiently, she recalls, and looked at her differently than any other teacher before. “Ms. McKamey was able to see the good in me through the worst of my times,” Jesmyn recalls now. “When I came to Mission, I was going through a lot of challenges in my life and I was a mess. I had a huge attitude. But Ms. McKamey continued to remind me that I was a wise and beautiful young lady every chance she got. If I didn’t feel like reading or writing and I gave her attitude, she’d give it right back to me, but then there was a compliment about my work right after.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She got an A– in that night class with McKamey. “I worked my butt off learning grammar and writing,” she says. “When I heard my grade, I thought they made a mistake.” A year earlier, she had transferred to Mission High with a GPA of 1.1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In too many schools across the country, African American students are more likely to have lower grades than other students, be placed in lower-tracked classes, be diagnosed with special needs, and be suspended for “willful defiance.” But despite the depressing statistics and the prejudices that perpetuate them, most schools have always had some educators who succeed in reducing or erasing these patterns in their classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of teaching, studying her subject and the craft of teaching, and learning from her students and her colleagues, McKamey is one such teacher today. She has succeeded by forging alliances with like-minded colleagues such as Robert Roth and Taica Hsu and working with her peers to personally mentor at-risk students like Jesmyn. Teaching is a very complex, highly intellectual endeavor, McKamey tells me. Teachers need to know their subject deeply as well as how students think about and learn the subject. They need to have the skills to see what students know and where they are in their learning trajectory. Teachers need to practice using their judgment to decide which method to deploy and when. And they need to work on their affect by practicing specialized skills to build positive relationships with students from different cultures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-43191\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/12/MissionHigh-e1450722925871.jpeg\" alt=\"Mission High\" width=\"250\" height=\"377\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For McKamey, the most important value driving her teaching and coaching is her conviction that being a good teacher means hearing, seeing, and succeeding with all students—regardless of how far a student is from the teacher’s preconceived notions of what it means to be ready to learn. When teachers are driven by a belief that all of their students can learn, they are able to respond to the complexity of their students’ needs and to adjust if something is not working for a particular individual or group of students. “I’m not just a delivery person, delivering content,” McKamey explains. “Students learn through their own channels, their own brains. And all student work and actions in the classroom are valuable information. The students are always telling you something.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In every school where McKamey worked until she arrived at Mission, there was always a small group of teachers who would sit in the lounge and say negative things about African American students. Some would call them lazy and apathetic. Others would say that students who live amid poverty, violence in the community, and single-parent households could not be expected to do as much work as students from a more stable, middle-class, two-parent home. The vast majority of teachers don’t say things like that, yet too many don’t connect their self-esteem as professionals to how their African American students are doing. When most of their African American students are failing, they don’t view it as a crisis, but as the natural state of things. That’s why McKamey and a group of her colleagues keep an eye on grades, attendance, and referrals categorized by race, ethnicity, income, and special needs. They devote most of their resources to helping fellow teachers learn how to monitor their qualitative and quantitative data for all students and make personalized adjustments to bolster students’ daily classroom work. In this hyperlocal model of education, the voices and needs of students are the main driving force for making changes in the classroom, and by extension, the entire school. The impetus for change radiates from the inside out, rather than being imposed by bureaucrats and politicians who don’t have direct contact with students or knowledge of their intellectual and emotional development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43247\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-43247\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/12/Rizga-Kristina-cr-Winni-Wintermeyer-1-e1451026954151.jpg\" alt=\"Author Kristina Rizga\" width=\"250\" height=\"352\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Kristina Rizga \u003ccite>(Winni Wintermeyer)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The best way to improve teaching and reduce the achievement gaps, McKamey argues, is to allow teachers to act as school-based researchers and leaders, justifying classroom reforms based on the broad range of performance markers of their students: daily grades, the quality of student work and the rate of its production, engagement, effort, attendance, and student comments. That means planning units together and then spending a lot of time analyzing the iterative work the students produce. This process teaches educators to recognize that there are no standard individuals, and there are as many learning trajectories as there are people. When teachers share student work together, they train their eyes and minds to see and hear everything their students are thinking and experiencing and can choose the best tools to help students. This method also allows teachers to develop skills and a discipline for their own process of self-reflection and how to comment and grade for improvement—not just sorting and tracking. “At the center of growth as a teacher is self-reflection,” McKamey says. “It means developing habits of mind and specialized skills to look at student work every day and ask: What did I intend to do today? What did my students do? Did it work? If not, how can I change to improve?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McKamey’s twenty-six years of successful teaching tell her that thoughtful, collective analysis of student work—when implemented well and bolstered by effective one-on-one coaching—allows for useful professional development and real accountability from respected and trusted colleagues. There is a strong element of peer pressure in these collective reviews of student outcomes, and they are much more likely to tap into the intrinsic motivation of a teacher than the bonuses and evaluations based on test scores favored by bureaucrats and many philanthropists today. “I have never heard teachers talk about evaluations or bonuses as something that motivates them to improve,” McKamey notes. “What teachers talk about is the feedback they get from students, parents, and peers they respect.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The following is an excerpt from \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24612228-mission-high\">Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Make It Triumph\u003c/a>, describing the challenges of Pirette McKamey, a teacher at Mission High School in San Francisco. Reprinted with permission from Nation Books.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almost thirty years later, McKamey still often remembers her former teacher and recently sent him a thank-you letter when she heard that he had retired: “I have had a teaching career for twenty-five years myself now, some of it spent mentoring novice teachers, so I know how rare what you did is,” she wrote. “Fran, you always made me feel smart.” McKamey’s parents also said that she was intelligent, but Bradley was the first teacher who had the skills to provide evidence: his comments in class about the substance of her ideas, his feedback on her writing, the enthusiasm in his voice when he discussed her thinking. Over the course of a year, that proof solidified into a confidence that couldn’t be easily shaken anymore. It was that pride in her intellect that gave her the fortitude and resilience to cut through many racial stereotypes and negative myths as she made her way through high school and then Boston University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some students gather enough confidence from their teachers, family, mentors, and peers to succeed in spite of subtle and overt social cues that signal the perceived intellectual inferiority of black people. But too many African American students that McKamey encounters fall off the cliff. They internalize the damaging feeling of inferiority that young adults pick up even from the most casual encounters in and out of the classroom. Some are explicit demands for silence directed at black students. Others are more subtle rejections: averted gazes, hesitations, and pauses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jesmyn first met McKamey four years ago, when she walked into a night class to fix an F she had received in English. The first thing Jesmyn declared—with much conviction—was that she wasn’t good at school. The second statement she made was that she was a bad writer. Her teacher listened patiently, she recalls, and looked at her differently than any other teacher before. “Ms. McKamey was able to see the good in me through the worst of my times,” Jesmyn recalls now. “When I came to Mission, I was going through a lot of challenges in my life and I was a mess. I had a huge attitude. But Ms. McKamey continued to remind me that I was a wise and beautiful young lady every chance she got. If I didn’t feel like reading or writing and I gave her attitude, she’d give it right back to me, but then there was a compliment about my work right after.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She got an A– in that night class with McKamey. “I worked my butt off learning grammar and writing,” she says. “When I heard my grade, I thought they made a mistake.” A year earlier, she had transferred to Mission High with a GPA of 1.1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In too many schools across the country, African American students are more likely to have lower grades than other students, be placed in lower-tracked classes, be diagnosed with special needs, and be suspended for “willful defiance.” But despite the depressing statistics and the prejudices that perpetuate them, most schools have always had some educators who succeed in reducing or erasing these patterns in their classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of teaching, studying her subject and the craft of teaching, and learning from her students and her colleagues, McKamey is one such teacher today. She has succeeded by forging alliances with like-minded colleagues such as Robert Roth and Taica Hsu and working with her peers to personally mentor at-risk students like Jesmyn. Teaching is a very complex, highly intellectual endeavor, McKamey tells me. Teachers need to know their subject deeply as well as how students think about and learn the subject. They need to have the skills to see what students know and where they are in their learning trajectory. Teachers need to practice using their judgment to decide which method to deploy and when. And they need to work on their affect by practicing specialized skills to build positive relationships with students from different cultures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-43191\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/12/MissionHigh-e1450722925871.jpeg\" alt=\"Mission High\" width=\"250\" height=\"377\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For McKamey, the most important value driving her teaching and coaching is her conviction that being a good teacher means hearing, seeing, and succeeding with all students—regardless of how far a student is from the teacher’s preconceived notions of what it means to be ready to learn. When teachers are driven by a belief that all of their students can learn, they are able to respond to the complexity of their students’ needs and to adjust if something is not working for a particular individual or group of students. “I’m not just a delivery person, delivering content,” McKamey explains. “Students learn through their own channels, their own brains. And all student work and actions in the classroom are valuable information. The students are always telling you something.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In every school where McKamey worked until she arrived at Mission, there was always a small group of teachers who would sit in the lounge and say negative things about African American students. Some would call them lazy and apathetic. Others would say that students who live amid poverty, violence in the community, and single-parent households could not be expected to do as much work as students from a more stable, middle-class, two-parent home. The vast majority of teachers don’t say things like that, yet too many don’t connect their self-esteem as professionals to how their African American students are doing. When most of their African American students are failing, they don’t view it as a crisis, but as the natural state of things. That’s why McKamey and a group of her colleagues keep an eye on grades, attendance, and referrals categorized by race, ethnicity, income, and special needs. They devote most of their resources to helping fellow teachers learn how to monitor their qualitative and quantitative data for all students and make personalized adjustments to bolster students’ daily classroom work. In this hyperlocal model of education, the voices and needs of students are the main driving force for making changes in the classroom, and by extension, the entire school. The impetus for change radiates from the inside out, rather than being imposed by bureaucrats and politicians who don’t have direct contact with students or knowledge of their intellectual and emotional development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43247\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-43247\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/12/Rizga-Kristina-cr-Winni-Wintermeyer-1-e1451026954151.jpg\" alt=\"Author Kristina Rizga\" width=\"250\" height=\"352\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Kristina Rizga \u003ccite>(Winni Wintermeyer)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The best way to improve teaching and reduce the achievement gaps, McKamey argues, is to allow teachers to act as school-based researchers and leaders, justifying classroom reforms based on the broad range of performance markers of their students: daily grades, the quality of student work and the rate of its production, engagement, effort, attendance, and student comments. That means planning units together and then spending a lot of time analyzing the iterative work the students produce. This process teaches educators to recognize that there are no standard individuals, and there are as many learning trajectories as there are people. When teachers share student work together, they train their eyes and minds to see and hear everything their students are thinking and experiencing and can choose the best tools to help students. This method also allows teachers to develop skills and a discipline for their own process of self-reflection and how to comment and grade for improvement—not just sorting and tracking. “At the center of growth as a teacher is self-reflection,” McKamey says. “It means developing habits of mind and specialized skills to look at student work every day and ask: What did I intend to do today? What did my students do? Did it work? If not, how can I change to improve?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Unschooling is a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/02/how-do-unschoolers-turn-out/\" target=\"_blank\">hotly debated topic\u003c/a> on MindShift. This subset of home schooling, which doesn’t use any set curriculum and is instead directed by the child’s interests, is vastly different from traditional public and private schools. While the freedom inherent in the model excites some readers, others question whether young people educated this way will learn the important information and skills they need to become productive adults in our society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some readers object to unschooling because its proponents have opted out of the public system. They argue that a student-centered teaching approach like unschooling could never exist in a public system governed by standardized tests. But in reality there have been public schools modeled after unschooling, and a few still operate programs that hold self-direction at their core.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BIG PICTURE SCHOOLS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Big Picture Learning\u003c/a> network started with the \u003ca href=\"http://metcenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (MET)\u003c/a> in Providence, Rhode Island, and has expanded to almost 100 schools around the world, with 55 in the U.S. alone. The majority of the U.S.-based schools are traditional in-district public schools, although about 25 percent are public charter schools. Many are located in tough urban environments and serve challenging populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bplinfograph.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">longitudinal study\u003c/a> of 23 U.S.-based Big Picture schools, 56 percent of the students identified a language other than English as their first language, 18 percent were certified special needs and 62-74 percent were low income. All the Big Picture Learning schools use the learner and his or her interests and passions as the organizing principle of school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The focus is on each and every student, not on courses and classes,” said Elliot Washor, co-founder of Big Picture Learning. “We changed the lowest common denominator from the course to the student.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This model relies on small learning communities, about 150 kids per high school, although the model can be used in a larger high school that is broken down into smaller communities. Within that, each student gets \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/2008/10/advisory-structure/\" target=\"_blank\">an adviser \u003c/a>who stays consistent for at least two years, but often as many as four years. The adviser’s job is a complex mix of getting to know the student and his family and setting learning plans quarterly that include academic and social goals, as well as independent learning and internships outside of school. Each adviser has between 15-20 students.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'We changed the lowest common denominator from the course to the student.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“It’s a design that’s malleable and always evolving,” Washor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students may change their interests, but their advisers, who are also credentialed teachers, are keeping in mind the standards required by the state and fitting those into the interests of the students. The combination of internship, independent projects and teacher-led projects help cover the learning goals of the school, which are broadly: empirical reasoning, quantitative reasoning, communication, social reasoning and the personal qualities necessary for success in any endeavor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the adviser plays a big role in pulling these strands together and helping to shape independent projects, she also brings in other community resources when necessary to support a student's individual academic, social or home-life needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a student wants to dig into a specific subject, he or she will often take a class at a nearby community college. Big Picture schools bring in mentors and tutors from the community, and two days a week students are \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/2008/11/learning-in-the-real-world-lti/\" target=\"_blank\">learning in the community through internships\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Application is a very important part of knowing and it’s not a very important part of school,” Washor said. “How you use the things you learn outside of school in your daily life and how you manage yourself socially, emotionally and personally are all important. \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/07/06/beyond-academics-what-a-holistic-approach-to-learning-could-look-like/\" target=\"_blank\">You can’t separate all these things\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A big part of the Big Picture Learning approach is to make the learner accountable for his own education. When a student sits down with his adviser and guardian to set quarterly learning goals, he has much more power than in a traditional school when the same student might receive a schedule of required classes. The adviser works with students to scaffold skills like time management, goal setting and interest discovery, which are crucial to an independent learner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/0N1OP6VeL4c?list=PL62E2379E99A3FA16\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Big Picture schools, those quarterly meetings result in a spreadsheet of learning goals that the student is working toward, with deadlines and resources to help him accomplish them. Then, throughout the quarter, the adviser guides that student to meet the goals, teaching when that’s appropriate, finding experts if necessary and providing emotional support as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students are studying different things at different times and the focus is not on “mastery,” as it often is in \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/11/14/how-teachers-mix-online-math-with-classroom-instruction/\" target=\"_blank\">other asynchronous learning models\u003c/a>. There are still classes, but they aren't necessarily attended by every student in a grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We think you’re on a journey, and when you really learn how to do something well you realize how little mastery you have over something,” Washor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He admits teaching in this way is time-consuming and it takes trust between the student and her adviser, but Washor says learning takes time and is based in relationships. Big Picture schools honor the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/26/what-would-a-slow-education-movement-look-like/\" target=\"_blank\">slow process of learning\u003c/a>, trying hard to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/12/how-to-teach-the-standards-without-becoming-standardized/\" target=\"_blank\">meet required standards in non-standardized\u003c/a> ways without sacrificing depth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the unconventional approach and structure, Big Picture schools generally \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bplinfograph.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">perform better than the district average\u003c/a> on state tests, Washor said. He doesn’t believe those tests measure much about students, but good scores allow his staff to maintain their commitment to student interests, while still having a voice in the public system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big Picture Learning has made sure that outside evaluators are monitoring its work, including a \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Post-secondary-Outcomes-of-Innovative-High-Schools-The-Big-Picture-Longitudinal-Study-.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">longitudinal study on post-secondary activities\u003c/a> of its graduates that shows that the vast majority are either in college or employed in meaningful work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DO FAMILIES WANT STUDENT-CENTERED LEARNING?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critics of home schooling and unschooling often say only affluent alternative families choose this path. While it’s true that home-schooling families tend to be at least middle class, there are also families who choose it despite economic hardship.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'The reason there are so few truly unconventional publicly funded schools is that society doesn’t want them.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>When student-directed, choice-filled education was offered free to public school families in New Orleans, a wide array of families chose to attend the school, according to Bob Ferris, a founding teacher and onetime principal of the New Orleans Free School before it shut down in 2005. They had many low-income families and by the time the school closed the school was about 95 percent African-American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Black and Latino parents would come to us. Some were quite desperate,” said \u003ca href=\"http://www.chrismercogliano.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Mercogliano\u003c/a>, the former principal of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.albanyfreeschool.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Albany Free School\u003c/a>, an independent school operating on a sliding-scale model. “Their kid has already flunked out of five schools and they had nowhere else to turn.” Those parents were often skeptical of the model, which allowed students to choose what they studied, had mixed-age groups and looked very little like the schools they themselves had attended.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But over time, Mercogliano said parents couldn’t deny the change in their kids. Students who had been kicked out of multiple schools were suddenly begging to go to school. Staff members were saying positive things about students’ intelligence and unique ways of looking at the world, not calling with the newest problem. All of these things helped parents see beyond the traditional model and appreciate what Albany Free School offered their kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, very few people are ever exposed to this model, and those who are often find it threatening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The reason there are so few truly unconventional publicly funded schools is that society doesn’t want them,” Mercogliano said. “School districts and school boards and school people don’t want them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But is that the same thing as families not wanting them? If some kids find success in a more open, choice-based, free environment, isn’t it worth having that option for families that want it? Perhaps the real answer is not to turn all public schools into free schools, but to allow for a bit more variety within the public system so there is something for every kind of learner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Still curious about the Free School movement? Check out this admittedly long (55-minute) documentary on the New Orleans Free School.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src=\"https://player.vimeo.com/video/16116168?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Unschooling is a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/02/how-do-unschoolers-turn-out/\" target=\"_blank\">hotly debated topic\u003c/a> on MindShift. This subset of home schooling, which doesn’t use any set curriculum and is instead directed by the child’s interests, is vastly different from traditional public and private schools. While the freedom inherent in the model excites some readers, others question whether young people educated this way will learn the important information and skills they need to become productive adults in our society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some readers object to unschooling because its proponents have opted out of the public system. They argue that a student-centered teaching approach like unschooling could never exist in a public system governed by standardized tests. But in reality there have been public schools modeled after unschooling, and a few still operate programs that hold self-direction at their core.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BIG PICTURE SCHOOLS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Big Picture Learning\u003c/a> network started with the \u003ca href=\"http://metcenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (MET)\u003c/a> in Providence, Rhode Island, and has expanded to almost 100 schools around the world, with 55 in the U.S. alone. The majority of the U.S.-based schools are traditional in-district public schools, although about 25 percent are public charter schools. Many are located in tough urban environments and serve challenging populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bplinfograph.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">longitudinal study\u003c/a> of 23 U.S.-based Big Picture schools, 56 percent of the students identified a language other than English as their first language, 18 percent were certified special needs and 62-74 percent were low income. All the Big Picture Learning schools use the learner and his or her interests and passions as the organizing principle of school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The focus is on each and every student, not on courses and classes,” said Elliot Washor, co-founder of Big Picture Learning. “We changed the lowest common denominator from the course to the student.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This model relies on small learning communities, about 150 kids per high school, although the model can be used in a larger high school that is broken down into smaller communities. Within that, each student gets \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/2008/10/advisory-structure/\" target=\"_blank\">an adviser \u003c/a>who stays consistent for at least two years, but often as many as four years. The adviser’s job is a complex mix of getting to know the student and his family and setting learning plans quarterly that include academic and social goals, as well as independent learning and internships outside of school. Each adviser has between 15-20 students.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'We changed the lowest common denominator from the course to the student.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“It’s a design that’s malleable and always evolving,” Washor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students may change their interests, but their advisers, who are also credentialed teachers, are keeping in mind the standards required by the state and fitting those into the interests of the students. The combination of internship, independent projects and teacher-led projects help cover the learning goals of the school, which are broadly: empirical reasoning, quantitative reasoning, communication, social reasoning and the personal qualities necessary for success in any endeavor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the adviser plays a big role in pulling these strands together and helping to shape independent projects, she also brings in other community resources when necessary to support a student's individual academic, social or home-life needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a student wants to dig into a specific subject, he or she will often take a class at a nearby community college. Big Picture schools bring in mentors and tutors from the community, and two days a week students are \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/2008/11/learning-in-the-real-world-lti/\" target=\"_blank\">learning in the community through internships\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Application is a very important part of knowing and it’s not a very important part of school,” Washor said. “How you use the things you learn outside of school in your daily life and how you manage yourself socially, emotionally and personally are all important. \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/07/06/beyond-academics-what-a-holistic-approach-to-learning-could-look-like/\" target=\"_blank\">You can’t separate all these things\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A big part of the Big Picture Learning approach is to make the learner accountable for his own education. When a student sits down with his adviser and guardian to set quarterly learning goals, he has much more power than in a traditional school when the same student might receive a schedule of required classes. The adviser works with students to scaffold skills like time management, goal setting and interest discovery, which are crucial to an independent learner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/0N1OP6VeL4c?list=PL62E2379E99A3FA16\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Big Picture schools, those quarterly meetings result in a spreadsheet of learning goals that the student is working toward, with deadlines and resources to help him accomplish them. Then, throughout the quarter, the adviser guides that student to meet the goals, teaching when that’s appropriate, finding experts if necessary and providing emotional support as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students are studying different things at different times and the focus is not on “mastery,” as it often is in \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/11/14/how-teachers-mix-online-math-with-classroom-instruction/\" target=\"_blank\">other asynchronous learning models\u003c/a>. There are still classes, but they aren't necessarily attended by every student in a grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We think you’re on a journey, and when you really learn how to do something well you realize how little mastery you have over something,” Washor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He admits teaching in this way is time-consuming and it takes trust between the student and her adviser, but Washor says learning takes time and is based in relationships. Big Picture schools honor the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/26/what-would-a-slow-education-movement-look-like/\" target=\"_blank\">slow process of learning\u003c/a>, trying hard to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/12/how-to-teach-the-standards-without-becoming-standardized/\" target=\"_blank\">meet required standards in non-standardized\u003c/a> ways without sacrificing depth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the unconventional approach and structure, Big Picture schools generally \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bplinfograph.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">perform better than the district average\u003c/a> on state tests, Washor said. He doesn’t believe those tests measure much about students, but good scores allow his staff to maintain their commitment to student interests, while still having a voice in the public system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big Picture Learning has made sure that outside evaluators are monitoring its work, including a \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Post-secondary-Outcomes-of-Innovative-High-Schools-The-Big-Picture-Longitudinal-Study-.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">longitudinal study on post-secondary activities\u003c/a> of its graduates that shows that the vast majority are either in college or employed in meaningful work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DO FAMILIES WANT STUDENT-CENTERED LEARNING?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critics of home schooling and unschooling often say only affluent alternative families choose this path. While it’s true that home-schooling families tend to be at least middle class, there are also families who choose it despite economic hardship.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'The reason there are so few truly unconventional publicly funded schools is that society doesn’t want them.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>When student-directed, choice-filled education was offered free to public school families in New Orleans, a wide array of families chose to attend the school, according to Bob Ferris, a founding teacher and onetime principal of the New Orleans Free School before it shut down in 2005. They had many low-income families and by the time the school closed the school was about 95 percent African-American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Black and Latino parents would come to us. Some were quite desperate,” said \u003ca href=\"http://www.chrismercogliano.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Mercogliano\u003c/a>, the former principal of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.albanyfreeschool.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Albany Free School\u003c/a>, an independent school operating on a sliding-scale model. “Their kid has already flunked out of five schools and they had nowhere else to turn.” Those parents were often skeptical of the model, which allowed students to choose what they studied, had mixed-age groups and looked very little like the schools they themselves had attended.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But over time, Mercogliano said parents couldn’t deny the change in their kids. Students who had been kicked out of multiple schools were suddenly begging to go to school. Staff members were saying positive things about students’ intelligence and unique ways of looking at the world, not calling with the newest problem. All of these things helped parents see beyond the traditional model and appreciate what Albany Free School offered their kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, very few people are ever exposed to this model, and those who are often find it threatening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The reason there are so few truly unconventional publicly funded schools is that society doesn’t want them,” Mercogliano said. “School districts and school boards and school people don’t want them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But is that the same thing as families not wanting them? If some kids find success in a more open, choice-based, free environment, isn’t it worth having that option for families that want it? Perhaps the real answer is not to turn all public schools into free schools, but to allow for a bit more variety within the public system so there is something for every kind of learner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Still curious about the Free School movement? Check out this admittedly long (55-minute) documentary on the New Orleans Free School.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Can Kids As Young As Three Learn to Design and Create In Fab Labs?",
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"content": "\u003cp>Screen time for young children has been a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/03/11/screen-time-for-kids-is-it-learning-or-a-brain-drain/\" target=\"_blank\">hotly contested debate\u003c/a> among parents for years. Many worry that passive consumption of media through screens harms young children’s brain development, or at the very least means they are getting less interaction with caregivers, other children and hands-on play. On the other hand, most children under the age of 8 have access to a mobile device in the home and it can be hard to enforce an absolutely-no-screen-time rule. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.baykidsmuseum.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Bay Area Discovery Museum\u003c/a>, which focuses on hands-on, play-based learning, is trying to introduce a more active kind of technology use with the first Fab Lab for kids ages 3 and up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Discovery Museum is open to families and \u003ca href=\"https://www.baykidsmuseum.org/programs-and-events/programs-for-schools-teachers/program-offerings/\" target=\"_blank\">partners with schools\u003c/a> to bring schoolchildren to the museum in coordination with a multi-part visiting structure to help bring hands-on, creative learning back into the classroom. In contrast to a makerspace, which is a more free-form experience of making, the Fab Lab that museum educators are designing is explicitly connected to the ideas of design and engineering and connects to the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/10/new-science-standards-aim-to-relate-concepts-to-students-lives/\" target=\"_blank\">Next Generation Science Standards\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'What’s exciting about this is it offers a different way of using technology that’s much more active.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“In many ways it’s very connected to the maker movement, but there is more of an intentional focus on some of the skills connected to engineering, electrical engineering and more of an intentional draw back to math concepts,” said Elizabeth Rood, vice president of education strategy for the museum. Rood says young kids have always been fascinated by building things, and educators at the museum hope to help even the youngest kids begin to understand that the built world is designed by people. It doesn’t appear by magic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s really trying to take away the black box and helping kids understand the made-world around them,” Rood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum will be one of the first institutions in the country to pilot a Fab Lab for kids this young, and they are doing a lot of learning along the way. They’ve already started bringing in test groups and will start inviting classes to participate in the spring. All along, they are taking video, watching how interactions take place in the space and modifying activities, materials and curriculum based on what they see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>WHAT DOES A FAB LAB FOR 3-YEAR OLDS LOOK LIKE?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rood said the space is designed with multiple age groups in mind. If a family brings their 8-year-old and their 3-year-old, both kids should have developmentally appropriate activities available to them. The space has a laser cutter, 3-D printer, vinyl cutter (fun for little guys, making stickers), software, and soon hopefully an industrial sewing machine, which automatically sews based on a digital design. The Discovery Museum Fab Lab is three rooms, one room with the more complicated machines requiring more adult facilitation, and two rooms requiring less adult supervision and lots of materials at kid height.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent test of the space, museum staff set up activities related to building a city. They had precut cardboard pieces that kids could use to construct buildings, and the laser cutter ran in a corner so kids could see where those pieces came from (although in this activity they didn’t get to cut pieces themselves). They also had a circuitry table so older kids could wire up lighting for the buildings and streets, along with programmable cars. Little kids had access to lots of stickers, tape and paint to beautify the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-42857\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-1440x810.jpg\" alt=\"A dad and son beautify the building they built with pre-cut cardboard pieces.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-800x450.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-960x540.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A dad and son beautify the building they built with precut cardboard pieces. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Bay Area Discovery Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s all very hands-on, even with the kids who are at the point where they can interact with the software, it’s very hands-on,” Rood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She imagines the space as a place where kids can experiment with moving from three dimensions to two dimensions and back again. Perhaps children will build something with Play-Doh or clay first and then try to replicate what they’ve built using design software. That 2-D design can then be sent to the laser cutter for cutting. Inevitably the first design won’t work, so they’ll go back and tweak, in the process learning about iteration, trial and error, proportions and other engineering and math concepts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things we’re really grappling with now is that a major limiting factor is the software,” Rood said. Most design software isn’t appropriate for kids younger than 6 or 7. The museum is committed to keeping the Fab Lab child-centered, where parents are encouraged to interact with their kids, but activities are explicitly designed to be child-led. Most of the commercially available software would require lots of one-on-one adult-to-child attention, so the museum is looking into commissioning its own software.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum already has a strong focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) activities, and often trains teachers on ways to bring more hands-on approaches into the classroom. Some of those activities, like “fairytale engineering,” could easily be taken a step further with access to the Fab Lab. The activity is designed for kids ages 4 to 6. The educator begins by reading a version of \"The Three Little Pigs\" story, but with a focus on designing and engineering stronger houses. The story introduces the idea of prototyping. Then they read parts of the \"Three Billy Goats Gruff\" story and ask kids what they would design to get the goats across the bridge safely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kids come up with lots of creative ideas and then they get to play with designing and prototyping their ideas. Often that starts with cardboard, but in the Fab Lab, kids could take their exploration of materials further, printing the same design in plastic or wood and experimenting with how the same design works differently when made in different materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s been a lot of concern from \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/01/23/how-do-parents-think-educational-media-affects-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">parents and early education teachers\u003c/a> about the encroachment of screens into young children’s lives. There are tons of apps and gadgets marketed to parents of young children, many of which require the child only to passively consume content on a device. Rood agrees that kind of passive screen time can be a concern and that parents will ultimately make those decisions for their children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s exciting about this is it offers a different way of using technology that’s much more active,” Rood said. Her goal is to make technology use in the Fab Lab all about creating, with clear tie-ins to what’s happening in the material world. Even the lead curriculum designer was a little unsure that technology would be appropriate for young children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42871\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-42871\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-1440x810.jpg\" alt=\"A facilitator helps kids figure out how to program one of the cars in the Fab Lab.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-800x450.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-960x540.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A facilitator helps kids figure out how to program one of the cars in the Fab Lab. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Bay Area Discovery Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I was a teacher who really strongly pushed back against introducing technology into the classroom,” said Sara Norris, associate director of STEM education and partnerships. Most of the technology she saw being pushed on classrooms was passive, or limited to keyboarding or projecting things onto a smartboard. She wanted her kindergarten classroom to stay focused on interactive, interpersonal learning. So she was skeptical in her new job with the museum when they started talking about Fab Lab software for very young learners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt that experiential learning couldn’t mean time with screens,” Norris said. “It felt counterintuitive to me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the museum has built out the idea over the past several months, Norris has come to see the technology in the Fab Lab as just another tool, equal to any other tool in the space. The museum is working hard to make any technology time active time and Norris is watching how kids interact with the space to make sure it remains developmentally appropriate. She’s open to the idea that they may discover that 3 is too young for the technology side of things. She’s looking to see how long the little kids stick with the technology, whether they’re able to create what they wanted and if it sparks curiosity. All those things would be good signs.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'We want to not only hit things they need to address anyway, but enrich the experience and introduce new and creative ways for how to teach.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“It’s also about equity and empowering kids so they feel they can shape the world around them,” Norris said. Both she and Rood are passionate about bringing their design-thinking, creative, hands-on approach to kids from all backgrounds. As they experiment with the Fab Lab space, they’ve tried to bring in students from many backgrounds to make sure the space works for all learners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are seeing that these tools and this kind of technology is popping up in schools that serve affluent kids,” Rood said. “It is not happening in our public schools. I’m deeply concerned that there’s a divide not only in access, but I worry the answer will be putting technology in without understanding how we’re really going to use it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When visiting less affluent schools, Rood sees a focus on reproducing knowledge instead of creating it, a gap she hopes the museum can help correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the past year, the museum has been piloting a multivisit program. Museum educators visit the classroom and teach about design thinking before bringing the class to the museum, where they get to work with hands-on materials. In the Fab Lab, that hands-on time will mean using the software to design prototypes and using the machines to make their designs real. Then, back in the classroom, the museum educators continue to work with teachers to apply the same ideas to the rest of the curriculum, drawing direct parallels to the standards teachers are required to cover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve made it really explicit to teachers that all of our projects are connected to the standards,” Norris said. For example, the lessons look at more hands-on and creative ways to think about form and function, or cause and effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to not only hit things they need to address anyway, but enrich the experience and introduce new and creative ways for how to teach,” Norris said. Bay Area teachers they’ve worked with have been appreciative of this work, asking for more resources and lessons to extend the learning beyond the three-visit structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Norris said a lot of her time with teachers is spent helping them recognize the creative work they are doing daily in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Classroom teachers are constantly involved in design-thinking process all the time, whether they know it or not,” Norris said. They design lessons, see how their “end user” -- students -- respond, and tweak the idea. Norris says more and more public school teachers are seeing how creativity ties into the STEM subjects they are teaching, and are hungry for more resources and training in this model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LEARNINGS SO FAR\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the museum Fab Lab is in a “soft opening” phase right now, museum staff are already seeing some interesting things. “The most exciting thing for me was the collaboration I saw between younger and older children,” Norris said. Parents were also excited about the new space and many were down on the floor with their kids, instead of on their phones or having side conversations with other parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rood is excited about how the Fab Lab can push forward the museum’s mission to improve math education. “We really feel strongly that early math learning is the gateway to so many next steps,” Rood said. “We are working a lot in trying to help teachers make mathematics more visual, more conceptual and less performance based.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The interplay between building and designing is a great way to help make \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/11/19/how-turning-math-into-a-maker-workshop-can-bring-calculations-to-life/\" target=\"_blank\">theoretical concepts more concrete and visual\u003c/a>. “The FabLab is a great way to build math learning in the early years especially as we think about shapes, proportionality, how shapes fit together, angles and going from two dimensions to three dimensions,” Rood said. “There is so much you can teach in a FabLab using the equipment that’s so engaging and hands-on that is also so rich with math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the museum continues to invite families and classes into the space to test their activities, they will be reporting back to a \u003ca href=\"http://www.tiesteach.org/solutions/fab-labs/\" target=\"_blank\">global network\u003c/a> of educators interested in replicating any promising practices that come out of this pilot. The museum will also be commissioning a third-party evaluation of the program after it is formally up and running and has found its feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"description": "A children's museum in the San Francisco Bay Area hopes a new space will bring design and engineering concepts to life with hands-on activities.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Screen time for young children has been a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/03/11/screen-time-for-kids-is-it-learning-or-a-brain-drain/\" target=\"_blank\">hotly contested debate\u003c/a> among parents for years. Many worry that passive consumption of media through screens harms young children’s brain development, or at the very least means they are getting less interaction with caregivers, other children and hands-on play. On the other hand, most children under the age of 8 have access to a mobile device in the home and it can be hard to enforce an absolutely-no-screen-time rule. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.baykidsmuseum.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Bay Area Discovery Museum\u003c/a>, which focuses on hands-on, play-based learning, is trying to introduce a more active kind of technology use with the first Fab Lab for kids ages 3 and up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Discovery Museum is open to families and \u003ca href=\"https://www.baykidsmuseum.org/programs-and-events/programs-for-schools-teachers/program-offerings/\" target=\"_blank\">partners with schools\u003c/a> to bring schoolchildren to the museum in coordination with a multi-part visiting structure to help bring hands-on, creative learning back into the classroom. In contrast to a makerspace, which is a more free-form experience of making, the Fab Lab that museum educators are designing is explicitly connected to the ideas of design and engineering and connects to the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/10/new-science-standards-aim-to-relate-concepts-to-students-lives/\" target=\"_blank\">Next Generation Science Standards\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'What’s exciting about this is it offers a different way of using technology that’s much more active.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“In many ways it’s very connected to the maker movement, but there is more of an intentional focus on some of the skills connected to engineering, electrical engineering and more of an intentional draw back to math concepts,” said Elizabeth Rood, vice president of education strategy for the museum. Rood says young kids have always been fascinated by building things, and educators at the museum hope to help even the youngest kids begin to understand that the built world is designed by people. It doesn’t appear by magic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s really trying to take away the black box and helping kids understand the made-world around them,” Rood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum will be one of the first institutions in the country to pilot a Fab Lab for kids this young, and they are doing a lot of learning along the way. They’ve already started bringing in test groups and will start inviting classes to participate in the spring. All along, they are taking video, watching how interactions take place in the space and modifying activities, materials and curriculum based on what they see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>WHAT DOES A FAB LAB FOR 3-YEAR OLDS LOOK LIKE?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rood said the space is designed with multiple age groups in mind. If a family brings their 8-year-old and their 3-year-old, both kids should have developmentally appropriate activities available to them. The space has a laser cutter, 3-D printer, vinyl cutter (fun for little guys, making stickers), software, and soon hopefully an industrial sewing machine, which automatically sews based on a digital design. The Discovery Museum Fab Lab is three rooms, one room with the more complicated machines requiring more adult facilitation, and two rooms requiring less adult supervision and lots of materials at kid height.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent test of the space, museum staff set up activities related to building a city. They had precut cardboard pieces that kids could use to construct buildings, and the laser cutter ran in a corner so kids could see where those pieces came from (although in this activity they didn’t get to cut pieces themselves). They also had a circuitry table so older kids could wire up lighting for the buildings and streets, along with programmable cars. Little kids had access to lots of stickers, tape and paint to beautify the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-42857\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-1440x810.jpg\" alt=\"A dad and son beautify the building they built with pre-cut cardboard pieces.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-800x450.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/city-beautification-960x540.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A dad and son beautify the building they built with precut cardboard pieces. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Bay Area Discovery Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s all very hands-on, even with the kids who are at the point where they can interact with the software, it’s very hands-on,” Rood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She imagines the space as a place where kids can experiment with moving from three dimensions to two dimensions and back again. Perhaps children will build something with Play-Doh or clay first and then try to replicate what they’ve built using design software. That 2-D design can then be sent to the laser cutter for cutting. Inevitably the first design won’t work, so they’ll go back and tweak, in the process learning about iteration, trial and error, proportions and other engineering and math concepts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things we’re really grappling with now is that a major limiting factor is the software,” Rood said. Most design software isn’t appropriate for kids younger than 6 or 7. The museum is committed to keeping the Fab Lab child-centered, where parents are encouraged to interact with their kids, but activities are explicitly designed to be child-led. Most of the commercially available software would require lots of one-on-one adult-to-child attention, so the museum is looking into commissioning its own software.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum already has a strong focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) activities, and often trains teachers on ways to bring more hands-on approaches into the classroom. Some of those activities, like “fairytale engineering,” could easily be taken a step further with access to the Fab Lab. The activity is designed for kids ages 4 to 6. The educator begins by reading a version of \"The Three Little Pigs\" story, but with a focus on designing and engineering stronger houses. The story introduces the idea of prototyping. Then they read parts of the \"Three Billy Goats Gruff\" story and ask kids what they would design to get the goats across the bridge safely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kids come up with lots of creative ideas and then they get to play with designing and prototyping their ideas. Often that starts with cardboard, but in the Fab Lab, kids could take their exploration of materials further, printing the same design in plastic or wood and experimenting with how the same design works differently when made in different materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s been a lot of concern from \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/01/23/how-do-parents-think-educational-media-affects-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">parents and early education teachers\u003c/a> about the encroachment of screens into young children’s lives. There are tons of apps and gadgets marketed to parents of young children, many of which require the child only to passively consume content on a device. Rood agrees that kind of passive screen time can be a concern and that parents will ultimately make those decisions for their children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s exciting about this is it offers a different way of using technology that’s much more active,” Rood said. Her goal is to make technology use in the Fab Lab all about creating, with clear tie-ins to what’s happening in the material world. Even the lead curriculum designer was a little unsure that technology would be appropriate for young children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42871\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-42871\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-1440x810.jpg\" alt=\"A facilitator helps kids figure out how to program one of the cars in the Fab Lab.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-800x450.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/programmable-car-960x540.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A facilitator helps kids figure out how to program one of the cars in the Fab Lab. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Bay Area Discovery Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I was a teacher who really strongly pushed back against introducing technology into the classroom,” said Sara Norris, associate director of STEM education and partnerships. Most of the technology she saw being pushed on classrooms was passive, or limited to keyboarding or projecting things onto a smartboard. She wanted her kindergarten classroom to stay focused on interactive, interpersonal learning. So she was skeptical in her new job with the museum when they started talking about Fab Lab software for very young learners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt that experiential learning couldn’t mean time with screens,” Norris said. “It felt counterintuitive to me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the museum has built out the idea over the past several months, Norris has come to see the technology in the Fab Lab as just another tool, equal to any other tool in the space. The museum is working hard to make any technology time active time and Norris is watching how kids interact with the space to make sure it remains developmentally appropriate. She’s open to the idea that they may discover that 3 is too young for the technology side of things. She’s looking to see how long the little kids stick with the technology, whether they’re able to create what they wanted and if it sparks curiosity. All those things would be good signs.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'We want to not only hit things they need to address anyway, but enrich the experience and introduce new and creative ways for how to teach.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“It’s also about equity and empowering kids so they feel they can shape the world around them,” Norris said. Both she and Rood are passionate about bringing their design-thinking, creative, hands-on approach to kids from all backgrounds. As they experiment with the Fab Lab space, they’ve tried to bring in students from many backgrounds to make sure the space works for all learners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are seeing that these tools and this kind of technology is popping up in schools that serve affluent kids,” Rood said. “It is not happening in our public schools. I’m deeply concerned that there’s a divide not only in access, but I worry the answer will be putting technology in without understanding how we’re really going to use it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When visiting less affluent schools, Rood sees a focus on reproducing knowledge instead of creating it, a gap she hopes the museum can help correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the past year, the museum has been piloting a multivisit program. Museum educators visit the classroom and teach about design thinking before bringing the class to the museum, where they get to work with hands-on materials. In the Fab Lab, that hands-on time will mean using the software to design prototypes and using the machines to make their designs real. Then, back in the classroom, the museum educators continue to work with teachers to apply the same ideas to the rest of the curriculum, drawing direct parallels to the standards teachers are required to cover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve made it really explicit to teachers that all of our projects are connected to the standards,” Norris said. For example, the lessons look at more hands-on and creative ways to think about form and function, or cause and effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to not only hit things they need to address anyway, but enrich the experience and introduce new and creative ways for how to teach,” Norris said. Bay Area teachers they’ve worked with have been appreciative of this work, asking for more resources and lessons to extend the learning beyond the three-visit structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Norris said a lot of her time with teachers is spent helping them recognize the creative work they are doing daily in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Classroom teachers are constantly involved in design-thinking process all the time, whether they know it or not,” Norris said. They design lessons, see how their “end user” -- students -- respond, and tweak the idea. Norris says more and more public school teachers are seeing how creativity ties into the STEM subjects they are teaching, and are hungry for more resources and training in this model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LEARNINGS SO FAR\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the museum Fab Lab is in a “soft opening” phase right now, museum staff are already seeing some interesting things. “The most exciting thing for me was the collaboration I saw between younger and older children,” Norris said. Parents were also excited about the new space and many were down on the floor with their kids, instead of on their phones or having side conversations with other parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rood is excited about how the Fab Lab can push forward the museum’s mission to improve math education. “We really feel strongly that early math learning is the gateway to so many next steps,” Rood said. “We are working a lot in trying to help teachers make mathematics more visual, more conceptual and less performance based.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The interplay between building and designing is a great way to help make \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/11/19/how-turning-math-into-a-maker-workshop-can-bring-calculations-to-life/\" target=\"_blank\">theoretical concepts more concrete and visual\u003c/a>. “The FabLab is a great way to build math learning in the early years especially as we think about shapes, proportionality, how shapes fit together, angles and going from two dimensions to three dimensions,” Rood said. “There is so much you can teach in a FabLab using the equipment that’s so engaging and hands-on that is also so rich with math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the museum continues to invite families and classes into the space to test their activities, they will be reporting back to a \u003ca href=\"http://www.tiesteach.org/solutions/fab-labs/\" target=\"_blank\">global network\u003c/a> of educators interested in replicating any promising practices that come out of this pilot. The museum will also be commissioning a third-party evaluation of the program after it is formally up and running and has found its feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Stop Putting Things Off: 5 Tips For Focus and Productivity",
"title": "Stop Putting Things Off: 5 Tips For Focus and Productivity",
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"content": "\u003cp>Putting off work that needs to get done is perhaps one of the most \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/later\" target=\"_blank\">common human experiences\u003c/a>. Adults do it and kids do it, but delaying important tasks too frequently can cause anxiety and negative feelings about one’s self and one’s ability to finish work. Cycles of delay can be very disempowering, and in extreme cases can be detrimental to a person’s life. Many students put off work they aren’t excited to do, and over time develop poor study habits that affect them in the long-term.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Often people call this kind of delay “procrastination,” but psychologists have a very specific definition for procrastination that doesn’t fit the popular use of the word.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I procrastinate I’m putting something off voluntarily, and I recognize that putting it off is going to put me in a worse position,” said \u003ca href=\"http://http-server.carleton.ca/~tpychyl/\" target=\"_blank\">Tim Pychyl\u003c/a>, professor of psychology at Carleton University in Canada and author of \"Solving the Procrastination Puzzle,\" on \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201509031000\" target=\"_blank\">KQED’s \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em> program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'People are looking for a way to organize their tasks away, but that doesn’t work. At some point you have to do them.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Psychologists are careful to note that true procrastination is a complex set of behaviors that could stem from depression and is often related to overcoming some kind of adversity. It’s hard to know why people procrastinate without knowing the details of their experience, but recognizing when it’s happening and working to break the cycle could be important for both work and academic productivity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you have that sense of guilt, this cognitive dissonance -- you intended to do something and you don’t do it -- that provokes feelings of guilt,” Pychyl said. “Then you are probably recognizing that you’re engaged in some kind of self-deception. At that point I think you’re procrastinating and you’re probably going to be worse off for that delay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perfectionism lies at the root of many people’s procrastination. The fantasy that the work will be perfect and well received by everyone makes it difficult to get started. People often find it easier to do something else instead. If a student waits long enough, desperation sets in and the fantasy of perfection disappears, making it possible to complete the task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It's easier to change what you’re thinking about than to change what you’re doing,” said \u003ca href=\"http://john.jperry.net/\" target=\"_blank\">John Perry\u003c/a>, author of \"The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing,\" on \u003cem>Forum.\u003c/em> “So the first step to change what you’re doing is to change what you’re thinking about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He suggests fantasizing about completing the task perfectly as a way of fulfilling that need. Then fantasize about how it will feel to wait until the last-minute, as well as how it would feel to send it off the first day it’s assigned. Playing out the different scenarios intentionally might help overcome the perfectionist barrier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another big reason students put off tasks is that they are busy. There are so many tasks competing for attention that some are necessarily pushed to the bottom of the “to-do” list. That’s a perfectly reasonable form of delay, Pychyl said, and students juggling many demands will inevitably have to learn how to prioritize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, it’s worth noting that one common way of putting off the most important work is to do other productive work. It’s a kind of “moral substitution,” according to Pychyl, substituting cleaning or doing laundry, instead of sitting down to write a dreaded report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of procrastination stems from some kind of adversity and is often worse when the task is boring or has no meaning for students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Procrastination is an emotional regulation behavior,” said Mohsen Haghbin, a recently graduated doctoral student who worked with Tim Pychyl. “You try to postpone it, but that doesn’t resolve the problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Delaying the task makes students \u003ca href=\"http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-stop-procrastinating-start-by-understanding-whats-really-going-on-1441043167\" target=\"_blank\">feel better in the short-term\u003c/a> -- they can do something they like better -- but in the long-term they know it will harm them. Accepting this premise makes it easier to identify the environment, personality and task involved and to pinpoint where the adversity is coming from and what might help to remove that barrier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>IS DELAYING ALWAYS BAD?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers like Pychyl and Haghbin dislike how the various forms of delay stemming from many different motivations get lumped under the single term “procrastination,” which has a negative connotation. Inevitable delays from a busy life aren’t necessarily bad. And, some delays actually help people complete work more efficiently when they are finally ready to sit down and do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, when writing, sometimes ideas need a little more incubation time. By leaving the keyboard, engaging in a different task and coming back later, a student might actually have saved a lot of agonizing over why she couldn’t write. In those moments, Pychyl said, it’s unnecessary and unhelpful to beat oneself up as a “procrastinator.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those people who self-forgive when they procrastinate are more likely to try again,” Pychyl said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haghbin has his own hypothesis about procrastination that he hasn’t been able to prove through research. He believes that procrastinators may be more creative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Maybe those who have lower levels of conscientiousness, they are more willing to try and do other things, they are more creative, they are less likely to be put in a box,” Haghbin said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this case, procrastination might be a form of self-actualization, although it’s important to note that a scenario in which a student doesn’t complete a task because he doesn’t find it important, and then doesn’t feel bad about it, is not procrastination. That delay didn’t cause negative emotions, so it falls into a different category of behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TIPS TO OVERCOME DELAY TEMPTATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are lots of strategies that might help students stay on task or improve their focus. Tricking oneself in various small ways is a common technique.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re treating yourself like you teach your teenagers,” explained Perry. \"You don’t just expect them to spontaneously do what they should do. You set up the structure so that they really have motivation to do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says the current self needs to be the parent to the future self, manipulating the future self, who will inevitably be in the throes of procrastination. For example, Perry hates waking up in the morning. He knows he will hate it and that he’ll press snooze and miss his meetings. So the night before, when he’s not in the middle of putting off getting up, he sets his alarm clock and puts it in another room. When it goes off in the morning, he’ll have to get up and get out of bed to shut it off. He has manipulated his future self into getting up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thinking about delaying as a choice can also make refocusing very empowering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all prioritization, and of course there are other things like avoidance going on, but to me it’s really about being clear about what things you really need and want to do, and setting aside time to do those,” said Joshua Zerkel, productivity expert for the note-taking app Evernote, on \u003cem>Forum.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He works with employees at the company to analyze their choices, set realistic goals and timeframes for meeting them, and offer focusing tips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says tools like \u003ca href=\"https://www.rescuetime.com/\" target=\"_blank\">RescueTime\u003c/a>, which allows an employee to block certain websites from himself for a set amount of time, can be helpful to some people. “A more useful thing than blocking websites is for a person to be mindful of the time,” Zerkel said. “How long does it take to work on a given task? How much time have you set aside and is it enough?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/10/04/teach-kids-to-be-their-own-filter/\" target=\"_blank\">other educators have noted\u003c/a>, online distractions like social media sites are here to stay, so helping students find techniques to meaningfully focus their time is key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>John Perry suggests a “Power Hour” of work as an effective way to focus. Get all the things you need, refocus on why the task is important, and then sit down and work on it for a full hour without doing anything else. Perry also makes sure there are lots of small productive tasks on his to-do list, so if he’s procrastinating on a larger project, at least he’s doing so productively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many people, starting the task is the hardest part. Some people tell themselves they’re just going to work for five minutes, but inevitably once they get going they work for much longer. It’s a way of tricking the self to get over the starting barrier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I say to myself, if I was going to do this task what’s the first thing I’d have to do? Open a clean piece of letterhead. I keep it that simple and just get going,” Pychyl said. He also uses mantras to remind himself of things like “it’s not going to be easier tomorrow.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zerkel has also experimented with lyricless music to focus attention, which he says works for some people and not others. Task list apps can also be helpful, although he notes that people can get a little app crazy, writing their tasks down in 20 different ways. “People are looking for a way to organize their tasks away, but that doesn’t work,” Zerkel said. “At some point you have to do them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For students, visualization can be helpful in a number of ways. Ask them to remember another time they were successful. What did they do? How did it feel? This process can help restore the student’s sense of self-efficacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They need to imitate the times they have been successful and remind themselves of times when they have been effective,” said Haghbin. This is how he overcomes his own moments of delay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haghbin also notes that the university is a time when anxious procrastination often increases. Students are often on their own for the first time, without parents or high school teachers helping them organize their time. In a study, he found that between 34 and 39 percent of university students experience high levels of irrational delay. For some of them delaying work is a new experience, and so it is particularly anxiety-provoking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haghbin worries most about this group of students, who haven’t adapted to delayed ways of working and are putting huge amounts of emotional stress on themselves with negative feelings about their procrastination.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Putting off work that needs to get done is perhaps one of the most \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/later\" target=\"_blank\">common human experiences\u003c/a>. Adults do it and kids do it, but delaying important tasks too frequently can cause anxiety and negative feelings about one’s self and one’s ability to finish work. Cycles of delay can be very disempowering, and in extreme cases can be detrimental to a person’s life. Many students put off work they aren’t excited to do, and over time develop poor study habits that affect them in the long-term.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Often people call this kind of delay “procrastination,” but psychologists have a very specific definition for procrastination that doesn’t fit the popular use of the word.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I procrastinate I’m putting something off voluntarily, and I recognize that putting it off is going to put me in a worse position,” said \u003ca href=\"http://http-server.carleton.ca/~tpychyl/\" target=\"_blank\">Tim Pychyl\u003c/a>, professor of psychology at Carleton University in Canada and author of \"Solving the Procrastination Puzzle,\" on \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201509031000\" target=\"_blank\">KQED’s \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em> program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'People are looking for a way to organize their tasks away, but that doesn’t work. At some point you have to do them.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Psychologists are careful to note that true procrastination is a complex set of behaviors that could stem from depression and is often related to overcoming some kind of adversity. It’s hard to know why people procrastinate without knowing the details of their experience, but recognizing when it’s happening and working to break the cycle could be important for both work and academic productivity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you have that sense of guilt, this cognitive dissonance -- you intended to do something and you don’t do it -- that provokes feelings of guilt,” Pychyl said. “Then you are probably recognizing that you’re engaged in some kind of self-deception. At that point I think you’re procrastinating and you’re probably going to be worse off for that delay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perfectionism lies at the root of many people’s procrastination. The fantasy that the work will be perfect and well received by everyone makes it difficult to get started. People often find it easier to do something else instead. If a student waits long enough, desperation sets in and the fantasy of perfection disappears, making it possible to complete the task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It's easier to change what you’re thinking about than to change what you’re doing,” said \u003ca href=\"http://john.jperry.net/\" target=\"_blank\">John Perry\u003c/a>, author of \"The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing,\" on \u003cem>Forum.\u003c/em> “So the first step to change what you’re doing is to change what you’re thinking about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He suggests fantasizing about completing the task perfectly as a way of fulfilling that need. Then fantasize about how it will feel to wait until the last-minute, as well as how it would feel to send it off the first day it’s assigned. Playing out the different scenarios intentionally might help overcome the perfectionist barrier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another big reason students put off tasks is that they are busy. There are so many tasks competing for attention that some are necessarily pushed to the bottom of the “to-do” list. That’s a perfectly reasonable form of delay, Pychyl said, and students juggling many demands will inevitably have to learn how to prioritize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, it’s worth noting that one common way of putting off the most important work is to do other productive work. It’s a kind of “moral substitution,” according to Pychyl, substituting cleaning or doing laundry, instead of sitting down to write a dreaded report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of procrastination stems from some kind of adversity and is often worse when the task is boring or has no meaning for students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Procrastination is an emotional regulation behavior,” said Mohsen Haghbin, a recently graduated doctoral student who worked with Tim Pychyl. “You try to postpone it, but that doesn’t resolve the problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Delaying the task makes students \u003ca href=\"http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-stop-procrastinating-start-by-understanding-whats-really-going-on-1441043167\" target=\"_blank\">feel better in the short-term\u003c/a> -- they can do something they like better -- but in the long-term they know it will harm them. Accepting this premise makes it easier to identify the environment, personality and task involved and to pinpoint where the adversity is coming from and what might help to remove that barrier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>IS DELAYING ALWAYS BAD?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers like Pychyl and Haghbin dislike how the various forms of delay stemming from many different motivations get lumped under the single term “procrastination,” which has a negative connotation. Inevitable delays from a busy life aren’t necessarily bad. And, some delays actually help people complete work more efficiently when they are finally ready to sit down and do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, when writing, sometimes ideas need a little more incubation time. By leaving the keyboard, engaging in a different task and coming back later, a student might actually have saved a lot of agonizing over why she couldn’t write. In those moments, Pychyl said, it’s unnecessary and unhelpful to beat oneself up as a “procrastinator.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those people who self-forgive when they procrastinate are more likely to try again,” Pychyl said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haghbin has his own hypothesis about procrastination that he hasn’t been able to prove through research. He believes that procrastinators may be more creative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Maybe those who have lower levels of conscientiousness, they are more willing to try and do other things, they are more creative, they are less likely to be put in a box,” Haghbin said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this case, procrastination might be a form of self-actualization, although it’s important to note that a scenario in which a student doesn’t complete a task because he doesn’t find it important, and then doesn’t feel bad about it, is not procrastination. That delay didn’t cause negative emotions, so it falls into a different category of behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TIPS TO OVERCOME DELAY TEMPTATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are lots of strategies that might help students stay on task or improve their focus. Tricking oneself in various small ways is a common technique.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re treating yourself like you teach your teenagers,” explained Perry. \"You don’t just expect them to spontaneously do what they should do. You set up the structure so that they really have motivation to do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says the current self needs to be the parent to the future self, manipulating the future self, who will inevitably be in the throes of procrastination. For example, Perry hates waking up in the morning. He knows he will hate it and that he’ll press snooze and miss his meetings. So the night before, when he’s not in the middle of putting off getting up, he sets his alarm clock and puts it in another room. When it goes off in the morning, he’ll have to get up and get out of bed to shut it off. He has manipulated his future self into getting up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thinking about delaying as a choice can also make refocusing very empowering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all prioritization, and of course there are other things like avoidance going on, but to me it’s really about being clear about what things you really need and want to do, and setting aside time to do those,” said Joshua Zerkel, productivity expert for the note-taking app Evernote, on \u003cem>Forum.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He works with employees at the company to analyze their choices, set realistic goals and timeframes for meeting them, and offer focusing tips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says tools like \u003ca href=\"https://www.rescuetime.com/\" target=\"_blank\">RescueTime\u003c/a>, which allows an employee to block certain websites from himself for a set amount of time, can be helpful to some people. “A more useful thing than blocking websites is for a person to be mindful of the time,” Zerkel said. “How long does it take to work on a given task? How much time have you set aside and is it enough?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/10/04/teach-kids-to-be-their-own-filter/\" target=\"_blank\">other educators have noted\u003c/a>, online distractions like social media sites are here to stay, so helping students find techniques to meaningfully focus their time is key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>John Perry suggests a “Power Hour” of work as an effective way to focus. Get all the things you need, refocus on why the task is important, and then sit down and work on it for a full hour without doing anything else. Perry also makes sure there are lots of small productive tasks on his to-do list, so if he’s procrastinating on a larger project, at least he’s doing so productively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many people, starting the task is the hardest part. Some people tell themselves they’re just going to work for five minutes, but inevitably once they get going they work for much longer. It’s a way of tricking the self to get over the starting barrier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I say to myself, if I was going to do this task what’s the first thing I’d have to do? Open a clean piece of letterhead. I keep it that simple and just get going,” Pychyl said. He also uses mantras to remind himself of things like “it’s not going to be easier tomorrow.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zerkel has also experimented with lyricless music to focus attention, which he says works for some people and not others. Task list apps can also be helpful, although he notes that people can get a little app crazy, writing their tasks down in 20 different ways. “People are looking for a way to organize their tasks away, but that doesn’t work,” Zerkel said. “At some point you have to do them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For students, visualization can be helpful in a number of ways. Ask them to remember another time they were successful. What did they do? How did it feel? This process can help restore the student’s sense of self-efficacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They need to imitate the times they have been successful and remind themselves of times when they have been effective,” said Haghbin. This is how he overcomes his own moments of delay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haghbin also notes that the university is a time when anxious procrastination often increases. Students are often on their own for the first time, without parents or high school teachers helping them organize their time. In a study, he found that between 34 and 39 percent of university students experience high levels of irrational delay. For some of them delaying work is a new experience, and so it is particularly anxiety-provoking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>By Andra Cernavskis, \u003ca href=\"http://www.hechingerreport.org\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was written by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/california/\">\u003cem>California schools.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TRACY, Calif. — On an early October morning, a mix of six kindergarten and third-grade teachers walked into Andrea Easley’s third grade classroom in Tracy, California to teach a science lesson. Students stared eagerly at the newcomers as Easley positioned herself the front of the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Today we are going to do another experiment,” Easley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yay!” the third graders cheered, some jumping out of their chairs in excitement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the teachers who were with Easley that day had never witnessed that kind of reaction from students when it came to learning science. Three weeks earlier, 12 teachers, including the six in Easley’s classroom, had met to plan their first lesson as part of California’s Next Generation Science Standards pilot program. They split into two groups and chose two classrooms — one kindergarten and one third grade — in which to collectively teach a science lesson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The national Next Generation Science Standards were established in April 2013 with the goal of improving the country’s performance in science, technology, engineering and math — often called the STEM fields. Twenty-six states have adopted the standards. Although they are not part of the Common Core Standards, which focus on language arts and math, the idea behind the science standards is very similar to that of Common Core: less emphasis on rote memorization of facts in favor of teaching a deeper understanding of scientific principles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pilot program in California, now in its second year, was developed and directed by the \u003ca href=\"http://k12alliance.org/index.php\">K-12 Alliance\u003c/a>, the science and math arm of the research non-profit WestED. The Alliance is training the teachers in the standards and overseeing the planning and implementation of lessons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to help kids to think like scientists and to develop the kinds of minds that engineers have,” said Kathy DiRanna, K-12 Alliance’s statewide project director. “We want to add the ‘how’ and ‘why’ along with the ‘what’ back into science education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal is to teach students how to develop hypotheses, test models and make evidence-based predictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tracy Unified is one of 10 California districts participating in the pilot program. The others are Oakland, Galt, Vista, Lakeside, Palm Springs, Kings Canyon, San Diego, and two charter districts, Aspire and High Tech High.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What happens when I add two books?” Maria Villasenor, a kindergarten teacher, asked her group of four third graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The students’ first trial had shown that with one textbook, the cup traveled one inch, a fact each third grader promptly wrote down on a sheet of paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s going to go farther,” Taylor Griffin, 8, responded, referring to the red Solo cup located at the bottom of the ruler.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sure enough, the cup traveled twice as far as it had when there was one book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Two inches,” Griffin said enthusiastically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Would you say there’s a pattern?” Villasenor asked the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes,” the four students replied in unison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What would happen if we put five books under the ruler?” Villasenor asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That would be way awesome!” replied Justice Lawhorn, 8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, the third graders appeared to understand the experiment and were able to adequately convey their understanding in written responses at the end of the lesson. The lesson was simpler for the kindergarteners. Without being asked to record their data, they were able to predict that the cup would move farther with more books under the ruler. In a group discussion after the experiment, many students were able to accurately describe the forces that caused the cup to move.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Tracy teachers, none of whom has a strong background in science, had expressed concern about their ability to teach the subject. When they finished the day’s two short lessons, the teachers were as enthused as their students. The new approach, coupled with attendance at some preparatory summer sessions, increased their confidence, they said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new methods “make teaching science so much more fun,” said Debbie Patterson, a third grade teacher, when the team first got together to plan the lesson in September. “The kids are excited too. They are as excited to learn science as they are to go to recess.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jody Sherriff, one of the Alliance’s regional directors, oversees the teaching teams in both the Tracy and Galt districts. A former middle school teacher, Sherriff started using similar methods to teach science in the 1990s. She expressed cautious optimism after the first two lessons in Tracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These teachers have been brought up in the era of explicit, direct instruction, so we are trying to break some of that,” Sherriff said. “I felt the group was locked in to this is what I do when I’m with you and then I do what I normally do when I’m in the classroom.” She said the goal is to get the teachers to start thinking about using the new methods “all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hope, according to DiRanna and Sherriff, is that the 10 districts currently participating in the pilot program will serve as examples for other districts in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jonathan Osborne, a professor of science education at Stanford University and one of the developers of the science standards framework, said it is too early to say whether the effort will help meet the long-term goals of getting students to think about careers in science. But the enthusiasm of the students in the two Tracy classrooms was a good beginning, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All the research shows that if you are worried about people heading onto scientific careers, all that matters is that students are interested and engaged by their formal science education,” Osborne said. “If they are not interested or engaged, it doesn’t matter what you put in the curriculum, they will not pursue a career in science.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other education researchers are more skeptical about California’s science standards. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an independent education foundation, found the standards to be mediocre at best. In a \u003ca href=\"http://edexcellence.net/publications/final-evaluation-of-NGSS.html\">report\u003c/a> released two years ago, it gave California’s former science standards an A grade and the new standards a C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the big problems is that there is a lot more emphasis on process rather than content,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the Fordham Institute. “It’s kind of a cliché to say that the goal is to teach kids to think like a scientist as opposed to master any body of content. You can’t think like a scientist unless you know what a scientist knows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The teachers in Tracy finished both lessons by lunchtime. At the end of the third grade session, Debbie Patterson, who normally teaches a different third grade class in the same school, asked the students to provide a written explanation for what caused the cup to move farther as the ramp was raised. After gathering the papers, the teachers left the classroom to discuss the lesson in the staff lounge, where they read the responses and divided them into four categories: fully understood the lesson, mostly understood the lesson, partly understood the lesson, and did not understand the lesson at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group’s leader, Sherriff, gave the toughest feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Scientists have to communicate their findings and be really clear,” she told her cadre while moving a piece of paper from the first pile to the second because the paper lacked clarity due to the indiscriminate use of “it,” which could have referred to the ruler, cup, marble, or force. “We have to get students to be clear.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They think we are trying to trick them and asking them to come up with something new,” Easley said in response to the many papers falling into the “did not fully understand/did not understand” categories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s because we did that for so many years,” Sherriff replied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Tracy teachers have several weeks to reassess and develop their methods: the next planning session in the pilot program will take place in early 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was written by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/california/\">\u003cem>California schools.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>By Andra Cernavskis, \u003ca href=\"http://www.hechingerreport.org\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was written by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/california/\">\u003cem>California schools.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TRACY, Calif. — On an early October morning, a mix of six kindergarten and third-grade teachers walked into Andrea Easley’s third grade classroom in Tracy, California to teach a science lesson. Students stared eagerly at the newcomers as Easley positioned herself the front of the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Today we are going to do another experiment,” Easley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yay!” the third graders cheered, some jumping out of their chairs in excitement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the teachers who were with Easley that day had never witnessed that kind of reaction from students when it came to learning science. Three weeks earlier, 12 teachers, including the six in Easley’s classroom, had met to plan their first lesson as part of California’s Next Generation Science Standards pilot program. They split into two groups and chose two classrooms — one kindergarten and one third grade — in which to collectively teach a science lesson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The national Next Generation Science Standards were established in April 2013 with the goal of improving the country’s performance in science, technology, engineering and math — often called the STEM fields. Twenty-six states have adopted the standards. Although they are not part of the Common Core Standards, which focus on language arts and math, the idea behind the science standards is very similar to that of Common Core: less emphasis on rote memorization of facts in favor of teaching a deeper understanding of scientific principles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pilot program in California, now in its second year, was developed and directed by the \u003ca href=\"http://k12alliance.org/index.php\">K-12 Alliance\u003c/a>, the science and math arm of the research non-profit WestED. The Alliance is training the teachers in the standards and overseeing the planning and implementation of lessons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to help kids to think like scientists and to develop the kinds of minds that engineers have,” said Kathy DiRanna, K-12 Alliance’s statewide project director. “We want to add the ‘how’ and ‘why’ along with the ‘what’ back into science education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal is to teach students how to develop hypotheses, test models and make evidence-based predictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tracy Unified is one of 10 California districts participating in the pilot program. The others are Oakland, Galt, Vista, Lakeside, Palm Springs, Kings Canyon, San Diego, and two charter districts, Aspire and High Tech High.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What happens when I add two books?” Maria Villasenor, a kindergarten teacher, asked her group of four third graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The students’ first trial had shown that with one textbook, the cup traveled one inch, a fact each third grader promptly wrote down on a sheet of paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s going to go farther,” Taylor Griffin, 8, responded, referring to the red Solo cup located at the bottom of the ruler.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sure enough, the cup traveled twice as far as it had when there was one book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Two inches,” Griffin said enthusiastically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Would you say there’s a pattern?” Villasenor asked the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes,” the four students replied in unison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What would happen if we put five books under the ruler?” Villasenor asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That would be way awesome!” replied Justice Lawhorn, 8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, the third graders appeared to understand the experiment and were able to adequately convey their understanding in written responses at the end of the lesson. The lesson was simpler for the kindergarteners. Without being asked to record their data, they were able to predict that the cup would move farther with more books under the ruler. In a group discussion after the experiment, many students were able to accurately describe the forces that caused the cup to move.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Tracy teachers, none of whom has a strong background in science, had expressed concern about their ability to teach the subject. When they finished the day’s two short lessons, the teachers were as enthused as their students. The new approach, coupled with attendance at some preparatory summer sessions, increased their confidence, they said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new methods “make teaching science so much more fun,” said Debbie Patterson, a third grade teacher, when the team first got together to plan the lesson in September. “The kids are excited too. They are as excited to learn science as they are to go to recess.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jody Sherriff, one of the Alliance’s regional directors, oversees the teaching teams in both the Tracy and Galt districts. A former middle school teacher, Sherriff started using similar methods to teach science in the 1990s. She expressed cautious optimism after the first two lessons in Tracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These teachers have been brought up in the era of explicit, direct instruction, so we are trying to break some of that,” Sherriff said. “I felt the group was locked in to this is what I do when I’m with you and then I do what I normally do when I’m in the classroom.” She said the goal is to get the teachers to start thinking about using the new methods “all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hope, according to DiRanna and Sherriff, is that the 10 districts currently participating in the pilot program will serve as examples for other districts in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jonathan Osborne, a professor of science education at Stanford University and one of the developers of the science standards framework, said it is too early to say whether the effort will help meet the long-term goals of getting students to think about careers in science. But the enthusiasm of the students in the two Tracy classrooms was a good beginning, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All the research shows that if you are worried about people heading onto scientific careers, all that matters is that students are interested and engaged by their formal science education,” Osborne said. “If they are not interested or engaged, it doesn’t matter what you put in the curriculum, they will not pursue a career in science.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other education researchers are more skeptical about California’s science standards. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an independent education foundation, found the standards to be mediocre at best. In a \u003ca href=\"http://edexcellence.net/publications/final-evaluation-of-NGSS.html\">report\u003c/a> released two years ago, it gave California’s former science standards an A grade and the new standards a C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the big problems is that there is a lot more emphasis on process rather than content,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the Fordham Institute. “It’s kind of a cliché to say that the goal is to teach kids to think like a scientist as opposed to master any body of content. You can’t think like a scientist unless you know what a scientist knows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The teachers in Tracy finished both lessons by lunchtime. At the end of the third grade session, Debbie Patterson, who normally teaches a different third grade class in the same school, asked the students to provide a written explanation for what caused the cup to move farther as the ramp was raised. After gathering the papers, the teachers left the classroom to discuss the lesson in the staff lounge, where they read the responses and divided them into four categories: fully understood the lesson, mostly understood the lesson, partly understood the lesson, and did not understand the lesson at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group’s leader, Sherriff, gave the toughest feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Scientists have to communicate their findings and be really clear,” she told her cadre while moving a piece of paper from the first pile to the second because the paper lacked clarity due to the indiscriminate use of “it,” which could have referred to the ruler, cup, marble, or force. “We have to get students to be clear.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They think we are trying to trick them and asking them to come up with something new,” Easley said in response to the many papers falling into the “did not fully understand/did not understand” categories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s because we did that for so many years,” Sherriff replied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Tracy teachers have several weeks to reassess and develop their methods: the next planning session in the pilot program will take place in early 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was written by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/california/\">\u003cem>California schools.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>By Thom Markham\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now that project-based learning (PBL) is becoming more popular, the doubters and haters also have surfaced. The recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/opinion/schools-for-wisdom.html?_r=0\">anti-PBL message\u003c/a> by David Brooks in the New York Times, which was fortunately \u003ca href=\"http://gettingsmart.com/2015/11/enriching-the-path-to-wisdom/\">well rebutted\u003c/a>, exemplifies the resistance. Citing High Tech High in San Diego, Brooks’ core message is that PBL is a kind of mindless education dressed up by technology and devoid of the ‘wisdom’ taught in traditional schools. Given that there are probably another thousand-plus schools across the country embracing PBL, this is a serious charge. And it’s false.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it should also be a warning to PBL advocates. PBL is gaining in popularity, but it’s not being done particularly well in many schools. Early in the school year, I worked with a group of earnest, professionally focused, K-5 teachers who had received three days of PBL training during the summer from a highly reputable PBL organization. They could recite the basics of PBL: Design a problem around standards; put student in groups; and plan an exhibition. But they left the training believing that the underlying goal is to cover standards by cleverly posing a problem for students that teachers can already answer. They hadn’t been instructed—or inspired—to practice the breakthrough kind of learning that PBL promises—the kind that leads to greater personalization, innovation, design thinking, self-directed learning, and, most critically, the kind of wisdom required in today’s world rather than the 1950’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is no one’s fault. Education continues to operate in a ‘safe’ zone where standards and pre-ordained outcomes predominate. As a result, many teachers practice a problem-based approach to PBL—the academic, teacher-focused method that originated in the 1960s in colleges and schools of medicine. The two approaches appear similar, but there’s a huge, and critical, distinction. PBL is designed to break students out of the box of conventional thinking by having them engage the world, exceed standards, and deliver creative solutions to authentic issues. A simple way to say it is this: Problem based learning teaches \u003cem>to\u003c/em> the standards; PBL teaches students to \u003cem>apply\u003c/em> the standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why would we not settle for highly constrained problem-based PBL? Isn’t it enough to have a bit more student-oriented problem solving in classrooms than ten years ago? Maybe. But that also means settling for staying inside the lines of the current system of teaching and learning. Continuing the obsessive focus on the ‘right’ standards, accepting vague simulations of critical thinking, and applauding students who deliver a bulleted list of talking points via PowerPoint presentations does not lead to transformation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To get at the depth of purpose and engagement necessary for learners today, there’s work to do in PBL. The way out of the box is to encourage teachers to let go, take risks, live with uncertain outcomes—and design projects that \u003cem>matter\u003c/em>. Enter the world \u003cem>as it is\u003c/em> at this time—as a place of wide open spaces and immense needs. Invent and deliver projects that retain the full power of PBL and, in the process, push education forward to meet its mid-century destiny. How? Here are five big ideas:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>See PBL as a mind shift, not a method. \u003c/strong>PBL offers a great structure for problem solving – it’s a Monday morning solution. But the process of PBL, when done well, takes students deep. It can awaken as well as teach, help students dig into their psyche a bit, and actually mature young people in ways that problem based and front of the room instruction can’t touch. PBL gives us a path forward out of the industrial past and into a world that requires a deep set of attitudes and skills necessary for navigation. But since the future is not fully unveiled, PBL teachers should be mission-driven, fueled by a sense of urgency and contribution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Put challenge first. \u003c/strong>Obviously, standards need to be addressed. That’s why starting a project plan by listing standards to be taught has become conventional advice from today’s PBL top trainers. I disagree. Teachers see standards as a helpful guide and organizer, but orienting to standards alone is dispiriting; they are not the grail we seek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the human mind sees a list, it’s in check-off mode. Instead, start with a challenge that excites students. Daydream. Muse. Envision students’ faces at the end of the project. Once the vision and intention is fixed—and a teacher \u003cem>feels\u003c/em> the challenge—that’s the time to return to linear mode: What standards will students learn, and how?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Get a lot better at Driving Questions. \u003c/strong>In general, PBL experts do not show teachers how to write great Driving Questions, nor is it well understood that the question or the problem is the high leverage key to deeper learning. For example, a typical question such as ‘How can we prevent climate change?’ encourages in-the-box thinking and a laundry list of suggestions drawn from the internet. That’s more coverage. Instead, ‘How can we, as 7\u003csup>th\u003c/sup> graders facing severe climate issues in adulthood, use data to effectively lobby our community about the dangers of climate change?’ forces students to grapple with core, authentic issues around the topic of climate change: Who do we believe? Why? How do we educate ourselves? How do we change attitudes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Turn skills and content into one conversation. \u003c/strong>PBL advocates assure doubters that PBL teaches academic content. And it does—but in depth, not quantity. It’s time to own that little sidestep. Also, 21\u003csup>st\u003c/sup> century skills still feel the tailwind from the past. Generally, skills are taught as an add-on to content. The goal is to define a \u003cem>third way\u003c/em> that paints a fully realized, blended picture of knowing and doing. PBL offers a \u003cem>learning experience\u003c/em> that seamlessly blends core concepts, key facts, reflective thinking, careful judgment, and skillful application of knowledge—all of which coalesce into a solution to a meaningful problem. In life and learning, skills and strengths now assume a role equal to or paramount to content acquisition. Identifying and verbalizing that new definition of rigor is central to overcoming the argument about lack of ‘wisdom.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Coach for openness. \u003c/strong>A skillful PBL teacher does much more than teach, and PBL offers amazing opportunities to go for the real gold in education: Helping young people become open, curious adults. A meaningful project taps into a student’s—and a teacher’s—desire to engage in purposeful work. From shared purpose flows a natural, engaged, caring, relationship where feeling, emotion, and respectful conversation become a central tool for opening the mind to intellectual work and a desire for further inquiry. The brain never works in isolation from the body and the heart, and when the whole child enrolls in the process of learning, the sense of satisfaction translates into a permanent attitude. There’s a shift, most likely in the neuronal pathways, but also in the less understood realms of brightness, a forward-facing personality, and the \u003cem>desire\u003c/em> for wisdom. Simply put, good coaching can push the permanent learning button.\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thom Markham is a psychologist, educator, CEO of PBL Global, author of leading books on PBL and intelligence, and an internationally-respected consultant on project based learning, 21\u003csup>st\u003c/sup> century skills, innovation, and high performance cultures. You can find him on Twitter \u003ca href=\"http://@thommarkham\">@thommarkham\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>By Thom Markham\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now that project-based learning (PBL) is becoming more popular, the doubters and haters also have surfaced. The recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/opinion/schools-for-wisdom.html?_r=0\">anti-PBL message\u003c/a> by David Brooks in the New York Times, which was fortunately \u003ca href=\"http://gettingsmart.com/2015/11/enriching-the-path-to-wisdom/\">well rebutted\u003c/a>, exemplifies the resistance. Citing High Tech High in San Diego, Brooks’ core message is that PBL is a kind of mindless education dressed up by technology and devoid of the ‘wisdom’ taught in traditional schools. Given that there are probably another thousand-plus schools across the country embracing PBL, this is a serious charge. And it’s false.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it should also be a warning to PBL advocates. PBL is gaining in popularity, but it’s not being done particularly well in many schools. Early in the school year, I worked with a group of earnest, professionally focused, K-5 teachers who had received three days of PBL training during the summer from a highly reputable PBL organization. They could recite the basics of PBL: Design a problem around standards; put student in groups; and plan an exhibition. But they left the training believing that the underlying goal is to cover standards by cleverly posing a problem for students that teachers can already answer. They hadn’t been instructed—or inspired—to practice the breakthrough kind of learning that PBL promises—the kind that leads to greater personalization, innovation, design thinking, self-directed learning, and, most critically, the kind of wisdom required in today’s world rather than the 1950’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is no one’s fault. Education continues to operate in a ‘safe’ zone where standards and pre-ordained outcomes predominate. As a result, many teachers practice a problem-based approach to PBL—the academic, teacher-focused method that originated in the 1960s in colleges and schools of medicine. The two approaches appear similar, but there’s a huge, and critical, distinction. PBL is designed to break students out of the box of conventional thinking by having them engage the world, exceed standards, and deliver creative solutions to authentic issues. A simple way to say it is this: Problem based learning teaches \u003cem>to\u003c/em> the standards; PBL teaches students to \u003cem>apply\u003c/em> the standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why would we not settle for highly constrained problem-based PBL? Isn’t it enough to have a bit more student-oriented problem solving in classrooms than ten years ago? Maybe. But that also means settling for staying inside the lines of the current system of teaching and learning. Continuing the obsessive focus on the ‘right’ standards, accepting vague simulations of critical thinking, and applauding students who deliver a bulleted list of talking points via PowerPoint presentations does not lead to transformation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To get at the depth of purpose and engagement necessary for learners today, there’s work to do in PBL. The way out of the box is to encourage teachers to let go, take risks, live with uncertain outcomes—and design projects that \u003cem>matter\u003c/em>. Enter the world \u003cem>as it is\u003c/em> at this time—as a place of wide open spaces and immense needs. Invent and deliver projects that retain the full power of PBL and, in the process, push education forward to meet its mid-century destiny. How? Here are five big ideas:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>See PBL as a mind shift, not a method. \u003c/strong>PBL offers a great structure for problem solving – it’s a Monday morning solution. But the process of PBL, when done well, takes students deep. It can awaken as well as teach, help students dig into their psyche a bit, and actually mature young people in ways that problem based and front of the room instruction can’t touch. PBL gives us a path forward out of the industrial past and into a world that requires a deep set of attitudes and skills necessary for navigation. But since the future is not fully unveiled, PBL teachers should be mission-driven, fueled by a sense of urgency and contribution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Put challenge first. \u003c/strong>Obviously, standards need to be addressed. That’s why starting a project plan by listing standards to be taught has become conventional advice from today’s PBL top trainers. I disagree. Teachers see standards as a helpful guide and organizer, but orienting to standards alone is dispiriting; they are not the grail we seek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the human mind sees a list, it’s in check-off mode. Instead, start with a challenge that excites students. Daydream. Muse. Envision students’ faces at the end of the project. Once the vision and intention is fixed—and a teacher \u003cem>feels\u003c/em> the challenge—that’s the time to return to linear mode: What standards will students learn, and how?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Get a lot better at Driving Questions. \u003c/strong>In general, PBL experts do not show teachers how to write great Driving Questions, nor is it well understood that the question or the problem is the high leverage key to deeper learning. For example, a typical question such as ‘How can we prevent climate change?’ encourages in-the-box thinking and a laundry list of suggestions drawn from the internet. That’s more coverage. Instead, ‘How can we, as 7\u003csup>th\u003c/sup> graders facing severe climate issues in adulthood, use data to effectively lobby our community about the dangers of climate change?’ forces students to grapple with core, authentic issues around the topic of climate change: Who do we believe? Why? How do we educate ourselves? How do we change attitudes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Turn skills and content into one conversation. \u003c/strong>PBL advocates assure doubters that PBL teaches academic content. And it does—but in depth, not quantity. It’s time to own that little sidestep. Also, 21\u003csup>st\u003c/sup> century skills still feel the tailwind from the past. Generally, skills are taught as an add-on to content. The goal is to define a \u003cem>third way\u003c/em> that paints a fully realized, blended picture of knowing and doing. PBL offers a \u003cem>learning experience\u003c/em> that seamlessly blends core concepts, key facts, reflective thinking, careful judgment, and skillful application of knowledge—all of which coalesce into a solution to a meaningful problem. In life and learning, skills and strengths now assume a role equal to or paramount to content acquisition. Identifying and verbalizing that new definition of rigor is central to overcoming the argument about lack of ‘wisdom.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Coach for openness. \u003c/strong>A skillful PBL teacher does much more than teach, and PBL offers amazing opportunities to go for the real gold in education: Helping young people become open, curious adults. A meaningful project taps into a student’s—and a teacher’s—desire to engage in purposeful work. From shared purpose flows a natural, engaged, caring, relationship where feeling, emotion, and respectful conversation become a central tool for opening the mind to intellectual work and a desire for further inquiry. The brain never works in isolation from the body and the heart, and when the whole child enrolls in the process of learning, the sense of satisfaction translates into a permanent attitude. There’s a shift, most likely in the neuronal pathways, but also in the less understood realms of brightness, a forward-facing personality, and the \u003cem>desire\u003c/em> for wisdom. Simply put, good coaching can push the permanent learning button.\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thom Markham is a psychologist, educator, CEO of PBL Global, author of leading books on PBL and intelligence, and an internationally-respected consultant on project based learning, 21\u003csup>st\u003c/sup> century skills, innovation, and high performance cultures. You can find him on Twitter \u003ca href=\"http://@thommarkham\">@thommarkham\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "‘Not a Math Person’: How to Remove Obstacles to Learning Math",
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"content": "\u003cp>Stanford math education professor \u003ca href=\"https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/joboaler\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jo Boaler \u003c/a>spends a lot of time worrying about how math education in the United States traumatizes kids. Recently, a colleague’s 7-year-old came home from school and announced he didn’t like math anymore. His mom asked why and he said, “math is too much answering and not enough learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This story demonstrates how clearly kids understand that unlike their other courses, math is a performative subject, where their job is to come up with answers quickly. Boaler says that if this approach doesn’t change, the U.S. will always have weak math education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a widespread myth that some people are math people and some people are not,” Boaler told a group of parents and educators gathered at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.innovativelearningconference.org/ehome/index.php?eventid=107259&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2015 Innovative Learning Conference\u003c/a>. “But it turns out there’s no such thing as a math brain.” Unfortunately, many parents, teachers and students believe this myth and it holds them up every day in their math learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'There’s no such thing as a math brain.'\u003ccite>Jo Boaler, Stanford professor of math education\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“We live in a society with lots of kids who don’t believe they are good at math,” Boaler said at an Education Writers Association conference. “They’re put into low groups; they’re given low-level work and their pathway has been set.” But math education doesn’t have to look like this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuroscience research is now showing a strong connection between the attitudes and beliefs students hold about themselves and their academic performance. That’s a departure from the long-held traditional view that academic success is based only on the quality of the teacher and curriculum. But researchers like\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/16/new-research-students-benefit-from-learning-that-intelligence-is-not-fixed/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Carol Dweck\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/documents/Academic_Mindsets_as_a_Critical_Component_of_Deeper_Learning_CAMILLE_FARRINGTON_April_20_2013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Camille Farrington\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.utexas.edu/cola/prc/directory/faculty/profile.php?id=yeagerds\">David Yeager\u003c/a> have shown repeatedly that small interventions to change attitudes about learning can have an outsized effect on performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuroscientists now know that the brain has the ability to grow and shrink. This was demonstrated in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study of taxi drivers in London\u003c/a> who must memorize all the streets and landmarks in downtown London to earn a license. On average it takes people 12 tries to pass the test. Researchers found that the hippocampus of drivers studying for the test grew tremendously. But when those drivers retired, the brain shrank. Before this, no one knew the brain could grow and shrink like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src=\"//assets.nationalgeographic.com/modules-video/assets/ngsEmbeddedVideo.html?guid=add25b17-713c-4e97-ad23-01918ae7eb0e\" width=\"640\" height=\"365\" frameborder=\"0\" seamless=\"seamless\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We now know that when you make a mistake in math, your brain grows,” Boaler said. Neuroscientists did MRI scans of students taking math tests and saw that when a student made a mistake a synapse fired, even if the student wasn’t aware of the mistake. “Your brain grows when you make a mistake, even if you’re not aware of it, because it’s a time when your brain is struggling,” Boaler said. “It’s the most important time for our brains.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second synapse fires if the student recognizes his mistake. If that thought is revisited, the initial synapse firing can become a brain pathway, which is good for learning. If the thought isn’t revisited, that synapse will wash away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150930/ncomms9453/abs/ncomms9453.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study of students with math learning disabilities\u003c/a> found in a scan that their brains did behave differently from kids without the disability. “What they saw was the brain lighting up in lots of different areas while working on math,” Boaler said. The children were recruiting parts of the brain not normally involved in math reasoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers tutored the group of students with math disabilities for eight weeks using the methods Boaler recommends like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/visual-math-improves-math-performance/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">visualizing math\u003c/a>, discussing problems and writing about math. At the end of the eight weeks, they scanned their brains again and found that the brains of the test group looked just like the kids who did not have math disabilities. This study shows that all kids can learn math when taught effectively. Boaler estimates that only 2 to 3 percent of people have such significant learning disabilities that they can’t learn math at the highest levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who learned math the traditional way often push back against visual representations of math. That kind of thinking represents a deep misunderstanding of \u003ca href=\"http://brannonlab.org.s84504.gridserver.com/wp-content/uploads/Park-Brannon-2013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how the brain works\u003c/a>. “When you think visually about anything, different brain pathways light up than when we think numerically,” Boaler said. The more brain pathways a student engages on the same problem, the stronger the learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42829\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 923px\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/visual-math-improves-math-performance/\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-42829 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/Screen-shot-2015-11-18-at-2.46.29-PM.png\" alt=\"An example of many ways to visually represent 18 x 5. \" width=\"923\" height=\"271\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/Screen-shot-2015-11-18-at-2.46.29-PM.png 923w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/Screen-shot-2015-11-18-at-2.46.29-PM-400x117.png 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/Screen-shot-2015-11-18-at-2.46.29-PM-800x235.png 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 923px) 100vw, 923px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An example of many ways to visually represent 18 x 5. \u003ccite>(Jo Boaler/YouCubed)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GROWTH MINDSET AND MATH\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Increasingly, educators are buying into the compelling research showing that what students believe about themselves \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/believe-brain-operates-differently/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">affects how their brains approach learning\u003c/a>. Growth mindset is probably the best known aspect of this research, and many school leaders are trying to figure out \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/08/24/growth-mindset-how-to-normalize-mistake-making-and-struggle-in-class/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how to implement growth mindset\u003c/a> programs in their classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“More kids have a fixed mindset about math than anything else,” Boaler said. And it’s no coincidence that they feel this way. Teachers often believe their students can’t achieve at the highest levels, and in turn, students believe that about themselves. Plus, the tasks themselves communicate a fixed mindset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is very difficult to have a growth mindset and to believe that you can grow or learn if you are constantly given short, closed questions with a right or wrong answer,” Boaler said. Instead, she recommends giving visual problems that provoke discussion and have multiple ways they could be solved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also says kids should not be grouped by ability or tracked into “advanced” or “remedial” groups. That common practice sends fixed mindset messages to students, both the “advanced” ones and the “low-performing” ones. Kids considered to be “gifted” suffer from ability grouping the most because they develop the ultimate fixed mindset. They become terrified that if they struggle they’ll no longer be considered smart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, mixed ability grouping can work if the \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/tasks/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tasks are open-ended\u003c/a> and what Boaler calls “low-floor/high-ceiling” tasks that allow every student to participate, while allowing lots of space within the task for students to grow in their thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boaler has lots of example tasks on her website, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">YouCubed\u003c/a>, and on the \u003ca href=\"http://nrich.maths.org/frontpage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NRICH website\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the summer of 2015, Boaler invited 81 seventh- and eighth-graders from a low-income district near Stanford to come to a summer math camp focused on algebra concepts. She gave the students a pre-test and found that their abilities ranged from very low (getting 0 answers correct) to fairly high. Then, for 18 days she taught them math well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDTUb6UWZYs&w=640&h=360]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The instructional program focused on mindset messages, was full of inquiry-based, low-floor/high-ceiling tasks, was visual and used mixed achievement groups. At the end of 18 days, when Boaler gave them another test they had improved on average by 50 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They improved because they changed their beliefs that they were not a math person to believing they were a math person,” Boaler said. After the course, students said they looked forward to math and saw math as a creative subject.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Administrators from the district came to observe partway through the camp and couldn’t tell who was a low achiever and who was a high achiever in the class. Boaler also makes it clear to the students in the workshop what she expects from them, and speed is not something she’s evaluating. Instead, they do norm building so that everyone knows how to appropriately work in groups, help one another and be supportive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src=\"https://player.vimeo.com/video/118763045\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we don’t pay attention to those kinds of interactions, and kids are dominating, or thinking they’re smarter, then we’re really in trouble,” Boaler said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Removing the time pressure from math is another important issue for Boaler. Neuroscience research out of \u003ca href=\"https://hpl.uchicago.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sian Beilock’s lab\u003c/a> at the University of Chicago has shown that time pressure often \u003ca href=\"https://hpl.uchicago.edu/sites/hpl.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/Ramirez%20et%20al%2C%202013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">blocks the brain’s working memory\u003c/a> from functioning. This is particularly bad for kids with test anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The irony of this is mathematicians are not fast with numbers,” Boaler said. “We value speed in math classrooms, but I’ve talked with lots of mathematicians who say they’re not fast at all.\" But it is common for math teachers to call on the kids who get the answer quickly, reinforcing the idea for all students that rapidity is what matters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COMMON PUSHBACK\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Math education experts have been making the same case as Boaler for decades, and yet math education in the U.S. has not shifted much. Teachers often say they have to cover all the topics in the curriculum to prepare students for the tests they will be expected to pass, leaving them with no time for the kinds of open-ended, discussion-based math that Boaler advocates.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'It is very difficult to have a growth mindset and to believe that you can grow or learn if you are constantly given short, closed questions with a right or wrong answer.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Boaler agrees with teachers that there is way too much to cover in the curriculum, especially because she finds much of it to be obsolete (don't get her started on the textbooks themselves). “The most important thing we can give kids is to think quantitatively about the world and apply a mathematical lens to different situations,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to teaching students, Boaler \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/online-teacher-courses/#\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trains teachers\u003c/a> in her methods. Often they go back to their classrooms and apply these theories, which means they aren’t covering every topic in the textbook, and yet their students do better on the standardized tests anyway. Boaler is not a fan of all the tests American students must take, but she says teaching math the right way deepens kids' understanding of math in real ways that show up on tests, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers and parents often push back against this kind of math. They wonder where memorization of math facts fits into the model, given the belief that kids must know their times tables to succeed in higher-level math. Boaler says that's unnecessary. She is a math education teacher and has risen to high levels of math learning without ever learning her math facts. She has number fluency, knows how to manipulate numbers and understands concepts, but she doesn’t have her math facts memorized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Programme for International Student Assessment test (PISA), which is often used to compare achievement across countries, has a section about \u003ca href=\"http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">attitudes and beliefs\u003c/a>. Those surveys show that kids who approach \u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/memorizers-are-the-lowest-achievers-and-other-common-core-math-surprises/\">math as memorization\u003c/a> are the lowest achievers in the world. “America has more memorizers than almost any country in the world,” Boaler said. The highest achievers are those who think about the big ideas and make connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likewise, repetition of math tasks is not helpful to deep learning. The same kind of problem with different numbers does not improve understanding, Boaler said. What students really need is “productive practice,” approaching the problem from different directions, applying the ideas and explaining reasoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boaler is on a mission to “revolutionize” how math is taught in the U.S. She has written several books to help teachers learn to teach with her methods, offers a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/how-to-learn-math-for-students/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">free online course\u003c/a>, and even gives away curriculum for teachers, students and parents on her YouCubed website. During one week at the start of the 2015 school year Boaler gave away \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/week-of-inspirational-math/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">five free math lessons\u003c/a>, encouraging teachers to try this approach. She’s pleased that 100,000 schools tried the lessons, and teachers could see the difference in their students. A survey of students found that after the lessons and the growth mindset videos, 96 percent believed they should keep trying after making a mistake in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boaler said a big problem is that math teachers themselves are math-traumatized. They came through a system very similar to the one in which they work. Elementary school teachers in particular often feel insecure about math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they try math in these ways they get it, too,” Boaler said. “They can see this is much more valuable and enriching.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Stanford math education professor \u003ca href=\"https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/joboaler\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jo Boaler \u003c/a>spends a lot of time worrying about how math education in the United States traumatizes kids. Recently, a colleague’s 7-year-old came home from school and announced he didn’t like math anymore. His mom asked why and he said, “math is too much answering and not enough learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This story demonstrates how clearly kids understand that unlike their other courses, math is a performative subject, where their job is to come up with answers quickly. Boaler says that if this approach doesn’t change, the U.S. will always have weak math education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a widespread myth that some people are math people and some people are not,” Boaler told a group of parents and educators gathered at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.innovativelearningconference.org/ehome/index.php?eventid=107259&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2015 Innovative Learning Conference\u003c/a>. “But it turns out there’s no such thing as a math brain.” Unfortunately, many parents, teachers and students believe this myth and it holds them up every day in their math learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'There’s no such thing as a math brain.'\u003ccite>Jo Boaler, Stanford professor of math education\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“We live in a society with lots of kids who don’t believe they are good at math,” Boaler said at an Education Writers Association conference. “They’re put into low groups; they’re given low-level work and their pathway has been set.” But math education doesn’t have to look like this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuroscience research is now showing a strong connection between the attitudes and beliefs students hold about themselves and their academic performance. That’s a departure from the long-held traditional view that academic success is based only on the quality of the teacher and curriculum. But researchers like\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/16/new-research-students-benefit-from-learning-that-intelligence-is-not-fixed/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Carol Dweck\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/documents/Academic_Mindsets_as_a_Critical_Component_of_Deeper_Learning_CAMILLE_FARRINGTON_April_20_2013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Camille Farrington\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.utexas.edu/cola/prc/directory/faculty/profile.php?id=yeagerds\">David Yeager\u003c/a> have shown repeatedly that small interventions to change attitudes about learning can have an outsized effect on performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuroscientists now know that the brain has the ability to grow and shrink. This was demonstrated in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study of taxi drivers in London\u003c/a> who must memorize all the streets and landmarks in downtown London to earn a license. On average it takes people 12 tries to pass the test. Researchers found that the hippocampus of drivers studying for the test grew tremendously. But when those drivers retired, the brain shrank. Before this, no one knew the brain could grow and shrink like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src=\"//assets.nationalgeographic.com/modules-video/assets/ngsEmbeddedVideo.html?guid=add25b17-713c-4e97-ad23-01918ae7eb0e\" width=\"640\" height=\"365\" frameborder=\"0\" seamless=\"seamless\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We now know that when you make a mistake in math, your brain grows,” Boaler said. Neuroscientists did MRI scans of students taking math tests and saw that when a student made a mistake a synapse fired, even if the student wasn’t aware of the mistake. “Your brain grows when you make a mistake, even if you’re not aware of it, because it’s a time when your brain is struggling,” Boaler said. “It’s the most important time for our brains.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second synapse fires if the student recognizes his mistake. If that thought is revisited, the initial synapse firing can become a brain pathway, which is good for learning. If the thought isn’t revisited, that synapse will wash away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150930/ncomms9453/abs/ncomms9453.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study of students with math learning disabilities\u003c/a> found in a scan that their brains did behave differently from kids without the disability. “What they saw was the brain lighting up in lots of different areas while working on math,” Boaler said. The children were recruiting parts of the brain not normally involved in math reasoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers tutored the group of students with math disabilities for eight weeks using the methods Boaler recommends like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/visual-math-improves-math-performance/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">visualizing math\u003c/a>, discussing problems and writing about math. At the end of the eight weeks, they scanned their brains again and found that the brains of the test group looked just like the kids who did not have math disabilities. This study shows that all kids can learn math when taught effectively. Boaler estimates that only 2 to 3 percent of people have such significant learning disabilities that they can’t learn math at the highest levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who learned math the traditional way often push back against visual representations of math. That kind of thinking represents a deep misunderstanding of \u003ca href=\"http://brannonlab.org.s84504.gridserver.com/wp-content/uploads/Park-Brannon-2013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how the brain works\u003c/a>. “When you think visually about anything, different brain pathways light up than when we think numerically,” Boaler said. The more brain pathways a student engages on the same problem, the stronger the learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42829\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 923px\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/visual-math-improves-math-performance/\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-42829 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/Screen-shot-2015-11-18-at-2.46.29-PM.png\" alt=\"An example of many ways to visually represent 18 x 5. \" width=\"923\" height=\"271\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/Screen-shot-2015-11-18-at-2.46.29-PM.png 923w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/Screen-shot-2015-11-18-at-2.46.29-PM-400x117.png 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/Screen-shot-2015-11-18-at-2.46.29-PM-800x235.png 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 923px) 100vw, 923px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An example of many ways to visually represent 18 x 5. \u003ccite>(Jo Boaler/YouCubed)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GROWTH MINDSET AND MATH\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Increasingly, educators are buying into the compelling research showing that what students believe about themselves \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/believe-brain-operates-differently/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">affects how their brains approach learning\u003c/a>. Growth mindset is probably the best known aspect of this research, and many school leaders are trying to figure out \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/08/24/growth-mindset-how-to-normalize-mistake-making-and-struggle-in-class/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how to implement growth mindset\u003c/a> programs in their classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“More kids have a fixed mindset about math than anything else,” Boaler said. And it’s no coincidence that they feel this way. Teachers often believe their students can’t achieve at the highest levels, and in turn, students believe that about themselves. Plus, the tasks themselves communicate a fixed mindset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is very difficult to have a growth mindset and to believe that you can grow or learn if you are constantly given short, closed questions with a right or wrong answer,” Boaler said. Instead, she recommends giving visual problems that provoke discussion and have multiple ways they could be solved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also says kids should not be grouped by ability or tracked into “advanced” or “remedial” groups. That common practice sends fixed mindset messages to students, both the “advanced” ones and the “low-performing” ones. Kids considered to be “gifted” suffer from ability grouping the most because they develop the ultimate fixed mindset. They become terrified that if they struggle they’ll no longer be considered smart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, mixed ability grouping can work if the \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/tasks/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tasks are open-ended\u003c/a> and what Boaler calls “low-floor/high-ceiling” tasks that allow every student to participate, while allowing lots of space within the task for students to grow in their thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boaler has lots of example tasks on her website, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">YouCubed\u003c/a>, and on the \u003ca href=\"http://nrich.maths.org/frontpage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NRICH website\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the summer of 2015, Boaler invited 81 seventh- and eighth-graders from a low-income district near Stanford to come to a summer math camp focused on algebra concepts. She gave the students a pre-test and found that their abilities ranged from very low (getting 0 answers correct) to fairly high. Then, for 18 days she taught them math well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/aDTUb6UWZYs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/aDTUb6UWZYs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The instructional program focused on mindset messages, was full of inquiry-based, low-floor/high-ceiling tasks, was visual and used mixed achievement groups. At the end of 18 days, when Boaler gave them another test they had improved on average by 50 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They improved because they changed their beliefs that they were not a math person to believing they were a math person,” Boaler said. After the course, students said they looked forward to math and saw math as a creative subject.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Administrators from the district came to observe partway through the camp and couldn’t tell who was a low achiever and who was a high achiever in the class. Boaler also makes it clear to the students in the workshop what she expects from them, and speed is not something she’s evaluating. Instead, they do norm building so that everyone knows how to appropriately work in groups, help one another and be supportive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe src=\"https://player.vimeo.com/video/118763045\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we don’t pay attention to those kinds of interactions, and kids are dominating, or thinking they’re smarter, then we’re really in trouble,” Boaler said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Removing the time pressure from math is another important issue for Boaler. Neuroscience research out of \u003ca href=\"https://hpl.uchicago.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sian Beilock’s lab\u003c/a> at the University of Chicago has shown that time pressure often \u003ca href=\"https://hpl.uchicago.edu/sites/hpl.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/Ramirez%20et%20al%2C%202013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">blocks the brain’s working memory\u003c/a> from functioning. This is particularly bad for kids with test anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The irony of this is mathematicians are not fast with numbers,” Boaler said. “We value speed in math classrooms, but I’ve talked with lots of mathematicians who say they’re not fast at all.\" But it is common for math teachers to call on the kids who get the answer quickly, reinforcing the idea for all students that rapidity is what matters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COMMON PUSHBACK\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Math education experts have been making the same case as Boaler for decades, and yet math education in the U.S. has not shifted much. Teachers often say they have to cover all the topics in the curriculum to prepare students for the tests they will be expected to pass, leaving them with no time for the kinds of open-ended, discussion-based math that Boaler advocates.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">'It is very difficult to have a growth mindset and to believe that you can grow or learn if you are constantly given short, closed questions with a right or wrong answer.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Boaler agrees with teachers that there is way too much to cover in the curriculum, especially because she finds much of it to be obsolete (don't get her started on the textbooks themselves). “The most important thing we can give kids is to think quantitatively about the world and apply a mathematical lens to different situations,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to teaching students, Boaler \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/online-teacher-courses/#\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trains teachers\u003c/a> in her methods. Often they go back to their classrooms and apply these theories, which means they aren’t covering every topic in the textbook, and yet their students do better on the standardized tests anyway. Boaler is not a fan of all the tests American students must take, but she says teaching math the right way deepens kids' understanding of math in real ways that show up on tests, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers and parents often push back against this kind of math. They wonder where memorization of math facts fits into the model, given the belief that kids must know their times tables to succeed in higher-level math. Boaler says that's unnecessary. She is a math education teacher and has risen to high levels of math learning without ever learning her math facts. She has number fluency, knows how to manipulate numbers and understands concepts, but she doesn’t have her math facts memorized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Programme for International Student Assessment test (PISA), which is often used to compare achievement across countries, has a section about \u003ca href=\"http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">attitudes and beliefs\u003c/a>. Those surveys show that kids who approach \u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/memorizers-are-the-lowest-achievers-and-other-common-core-math-surprises/\">math as memorization\u003c/a> are the lowest achievers in the world. “America has more memorizers than almost any country in the world,” Boaler said. The highest achievers are those who think about the big ideas and make connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likewise, repetition of math tasks is not helpful to deep learning. The same kind of problem with different numbers does not improve understanding, Boaler said. What students really need is “productive practice,” approaching the problem from different directions, applying the ideas and explaining reasoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boaler is on a mission to “revolutionize” how math is taught in the U.S. She has written several books to help teachers learn to teach with her methods, offers a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/how-to-learn-math-for-students/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">free online course\u003c/a>, and even gives away curriculum for teachers, students and parents on her YouCubed website. During one week at the start of the 2015 school year Boaler gave away \u003ca href=\"https://www.youcubed.org/week-of-inspirational-math/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">five free math lessons\u003c/a>, encouraging teachers to try this approach. She’s pleased that 100,000 schools tried the lessons, and teachers could see the difference in their students. A survey of students found that after the lessons and the growth mindset videos, 96 percent believed they should keep trying after making a mistake in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boaler said a big problem is that math teachers themselves are math-traumatized. They came through a system very similar to the one in which they work. Elementary school teachers in particular often feel insecure about math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they try math in these ways they get it, too,” Boaler said. “They can see this is much more valuable and enriching.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The students in Molly James’s kindergarten classroom were tasked with creating a mathematical art gallery. They had each drawn a number and then searched for two types objects they could use to compose a visual number sentence -- such as two rulers plus three scissors to equal five objects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After photographing and mounting their pictures on the wall in numerical order, the students sat on the floor with their sketchbooks and began to draw and talk. “I had expected them to learn something about number composition,” James said, “but I didn’t expect the remarkable observations they began to have about the photographs.” For example, when one girl looked at a picture of two red scissors and three blue scissors (2+3=5), she noticed that the direction of the handles gave rise to a \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">new\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> number sentence: 4 scissors pointing left + 1 scissor pointing right = 5 scissors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">James, who recently published a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=57294\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">paper\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> about creativity in the classroom, said moments like these remind her that “creativity is not fluff or an add-on, but is instead an essential part of what it means to be a mathematician.” In fact, she believes creativity is the key to helping her students become confident and skilled mathematical thinkers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Heather Hill, a p\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">rofessor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, encourages teachers to make room for creativity in the math classroom “because there’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/5-year-olds-can-learn-calculus/284124/\" target=\"_blank\">heaps\u003c/a> of evidence that kids are naturally very creative when it comes to mathematics.” In the same way that kids create their own stories or make up songs, “kids will invent their own methods for solving mathematics problems, even problems that are sometimes very complex.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In math education, said Hill, creativity is defined as “kids having their own ideas about how mathematics works and being able to work to verify that those ideas are correct.\" As it turns out, she noted, these are the same traits that are recognized and celebrated in advanced mathematics. When elementary teachers encourage students to ask questions, make observations, and tackle problems in inventive ways, they create an environment that supports creative mathematical thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some ways to tap into that creativity:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Encourage Students to Question and Observe\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Asking mathematical questions is a form of creativity,” said Hill. Kids love to figure out how things work, so when teachers present a new concept, they should also build in time for students to make observations and ask questions. James uses prompts such as, “What do you notice about this [shape, number, story, or design]?” or “How else could we use [addition, graphing, or sorting] in the classroom?” to help students build these habits.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\nPose Open-Ended Questions\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Teachers can make a habit of posing inventive questions, said Hill -- even something as simple as “How can we figure out whether to buy chocolate or vanilla ice cream for the class party?” The trick is letting kids decide for\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> themselves \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">how to figure out a solution. The teacher’s job, said Hill, is to make sure students have the tools they need to solve the problem and to ask clarifying questions during the problem-solving process. James said that when she poses questions that require “struggle and creative thinking instead of rote application of rules,” students are not only more engaged, she is also better able to assess their understanding of key concepts by observing in real time how they apply their math skills.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Engage in Rich Conversation\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One-on-one conversations help students articulate and extend their thought processes. As James circulates through the room, she uses prompts such as “Tell me about that; How did you think of that?; and What steps did you take?” to get kids talking. “I encourage students to share their thinking, and in turn I am open to the unexpected strategy,\" according to James. \"I am willing to say, ‘Wow, I never thought about that before.’”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Apply Skills to New Contexts\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://creativitylovingeducator.com/2015/07/21/making-room-for-creativity-in-math/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">one lesson\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, James asked her kindergartners to write a number sentence and then invent a story based on that sentence. Students depicted their story in three ways: as an\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> illustration, as a written sentence, and as a number sentence. James was surprised to find that a few kids who zoomed through their math facts really struggled to complete this task. “They wanted to give me a number sentence without a story,” said James. Being asked to manipulate and view numbers in this way “caused them a bit of internal conflict.” To help them through the process, James said she just sat with them -- wondering out loud and asking questions -- until they found their footing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">An activity like this is effective, said Hill, because it posed a question that “stretched kids outside of their comfort zone and called on them to think and invent.” James was asking her students to\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> contextualize, \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">which is “a core mathematical practice.” When young children are given opportunities to apply their math skills to novel situations, they take steps toward becoming confident and creative mathematical thinkers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>How Parents Can Help\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Parents also play a key role in nurturing a child’s mathematical mind. They can help kids discover the math that is embedded in our daily experiences. “Anything you can make into a math problem is a win,” said Hill, “because it shows the child how useful math can be, and gives them some practice in applying their own thinking to math problems.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">James and Hill offered these strategies for parents:\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Look for Patterns\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Be on the lookout for patterns and sequences. For example, said James, a parent could make a plate with one piece of cheese, two tomatoes, three carrots, and four grapes and then ask, “Did you notice what I did with your lunch?” Simple activities such as sorting toys, setting the table, or going on a nature walk can provide opportunities too look for and create color, size, number, and shape patterns. These activities also hone observational skills.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Leave Math Notes\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">James suggests leaving little, unexpected math messages around the house such as, “Did you eat more pretzels or raisins? How many more?” or “How many different routes can you take to get from the kitchen to the bathroom?” Kids will likely start to leave notes for you to respond to, as well. She also recommends putting a number on a big sheet of paper and leaving it up for a few days, letting everyone in the family add something they know about that number. For example, for the number ten, someone might draw ten fingers while another might write 10 + 2, two less than a dozen, the square root of one hundred, or the names of ten friends.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Have Math Chats\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take time each week to\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://talkingmathwithkids.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> talk about math with your kids\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in the same way you might talk about letters and stories. “Ask \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">tons\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of questions,” James said. “Ask them to show you how they know. Ask, Is there another way to do it? In turn, encourage your kids to try to stump you and let yourself be stumped.” Even math facts can prompt creative conversations. Hill said, “If your kindergartner can already add simple sums like 5 + 5 and 4 + 4, give them progressively more challenging problems. At each step, ask how the child figured out their answer - and prepare to be surprised at some of the unusual strategies they will use!” A few minutes of math talk two or three times a week is all that’s really needed to get your child thinking, said Hill. “I do it when the kids are really bored — in the car, on the subway, waiting in the doctor’s office, and so forth. They’re much more willing to do math when bored.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When parents and educators model creative engagement with mathematics, children come to see math as more than simply a set of facts and operations. “We want our students to become mathematical thinkers, not mathematical machines,” said James. “Even in kindergarten, I want to shape people who love solving problems creatively and who have the skills they need to someday change the world.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The students in Molly James’s kindergarten classroom were tasked with creating a mathematical art gallery. They had each drawn a number and then searched for two types objects they could use to compose a visual number sentence -- such as two rulers plus three scissors to equal five objects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After photographing and mounting their pictures on the wall in numerical order, the students sat on the floor with their sketchbooks and began to draw and talk. “I had expected them to learn something about number composition,” James said, “but I didn’t expect the remarkable observations they began to have about the photographs.” For example, when one girl looked at a picture of two red scissors and three blue scissors (2+3=5), she noticed that the direction of the handles gave rise to a \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">new\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> number sentence: 4 scissors pointing left + 1 scissor pointing right = 5 scissors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">James, who recently published a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=57294\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">paper\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> about creativity in the classroom, said moments like these remind her that “creativity is not fluff or an add-on, but is instead an essential part of what it means to be a mathematician.” In fact, she believes creativity is the key to helping her students become confident and skilled mathematical thinkers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Heather Hill, a p\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">rofessor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, encourages teachers to make room for creativity in the math classroom “because there’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/5-year-olds-can-learn-calculus/284124/\" target=\"_blank\">heaps\u003c/a> of evidence that kids are naturally very creative when it comes to mathematics.” In the same way that kids create their own stories or make up songs, “kids will invent their own methods for solving mathematics problems, even problems that are sometimes very complex.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In math education, said Hill, creativity is defined as “kids having their own ideas about how mathematics works and being able to work to verify that those ideas are correct.\" As it turns out, she noted, these are the same traits that are recognized and celebrated in advanced mathematics. When elementary teachers encourage students to ask questions, make observations, and tackle problems in inventive ways, they create an environment that supports creative mathematical thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some ways to tap into that creativity:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Encourage Students to Question and Observe\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Asking mathematical questions is a form of creativity,” said Hill. Kids love to figure out how things work, so when teachers present a new concept, they should also build in time for students to make observations and ask questions. James uses prompts such as, “What do you notice about this [shape, number, story, or design]?” or “How else could we use [addition, graphing, or sorting] in the classroom?” to help students build these habits.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\nPose Open-Ended Questions\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Teachers can make a habit of posing inventive questions, said Hill -- even something as simple as “How can we figure out whether to buy chocolate or vanilla ice cream for the class party?” The trick is letting kids decide for\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> themselves \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">how to figure out a solution. The teacher’s job, said Hill, is to make sure students have the tools they need to solve the problem and to ask clarifying questions during the problem-solving process. James said that when she poses questions that require “struggle and creative thinking instead of rote application of rules,” students are not only more engaged, she is also better able to assess their understanding of key concepts by observing in real time how they apply their math skills.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Engage in Rich Conversation\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One-on-one conversations help students articulate and extend their thought processes. As James circulates through the room, she uses prompts such as “Tell me about that; How did you think of that?; and What steps did you take?” to get kids talking. “I encourage students to share their thinking, and in turn I am open to the unexpected strategy,\" according to James. \"I am willing to say, ‘Wow, I never thought about that before.’”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Apply Skills to New Contexts\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://creativitylovingeducator.com/2015/07/21/making-room-for-creativity-in-math/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">one lesson\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, James asked her kindergartners to write a number sentence and then invent a story based on that sentence. Students depicted their story in three ways: as an\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> illustration, as a written sentence, and as a number sentence. James was surprised to find that a few kids who zoomed through their math facts really struggled to complete this task. “They wanted to give me a number sentence without a story,” said James. Being asked to manipulate and view numbers in this way “caused them a bit of internal conflict.” To help them through the process, James said she just sat with them -- wondering out loud and asking questions -- until they found their footing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">An activity like this is effective, said Hill, because it posed a question that “stretched kids outside of their comfort zone and called on them to think and invent.” James was asking her students to\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> contextualize, \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">which is “a core mathematical practice.” When young children are given opportunities to apply their math skills to novel situations, they take steps toward becoming confident and creative mathematical thinkers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>How Parents Can Help\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Parents also play a key role in nurturing a child’s mathematical mind. They can help kids discover the math that is embedded in our daily experiences. “Anything you can make into a math problem is a win,” said Hill, “because it shows the child how useful math can be, and gives them some practice in applying their own thinking to math problems.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">James and Hill offered these strategies for parents:\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Look for Patterns\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Be on the lookout for patterns and sequences. For example, said James, a parent could make a plate with one piece of cheese, two tomatoes, three carrots, and four grapes and then ask, “Did you notice what I did with your lunch?” Simple activities such as sorting toys, setting the table, or going on a nature walk can provide opportunities too look for and create color, size, number, and shape patterns. These activities also hone observational skills.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Leave Math Notes\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">James suggests leaving little, unexpected math messages around the house such as, “Did you eat more pretzels or raisins? How many more?” or “How many different routes can you take to get from the kitchen to the bathroom?” Kids will likely start to leave notes for you to respond to, as well. She also recommends putting a number on a big sheet of paper and leaving it up for a few days, letting everyone in the family add something they know about that number. For example, for the number ten, someone might draw ten fingers while another might write 10 + 2, two less than a dozen, the square root of one hundred, or the names of ten friends.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Have Math Chats\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take time each week to\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://talkingmathwithkids.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> talk about math with your kids\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in the same way you might talk about letters and stories. “Ask \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">tons\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of questions,” James said. “Ask them to show you how they know. Ask, Is there another way to do it? In turn, encourage your kids to try to stump you and let yourself be stumped.” Even math facts can prompt creative conversations. Hill said, “If your kindergartner can already add simple sums like 5 + 5 and 4 + 4, give them progressively more challenging problems. At each step, ask how the child figured out their answer - and prepare to be surprised at some of the unusual strategies they will use!” A few minutes of math talk two or three times a week is all that’s really needed to get your child thinking, said Hill. “I do it when the kids are really bored — in the car, on the subway, waiting in the doctor’s office, and so forth. They’re much more willing to do math when bored.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When parents and educators model creative engagement with mathematics, children come to see math as more than simply a set of facts and operations. “We want our students to become mathematical thinkers, not mathematical machines,” said James. “Even in kindergarten, I want to shape people who love solving problems creatively and who have the skills they need to someday change the world.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>It’s not that high school English teacher Mike S. is \u003cem>opposed,\u003c/em> exactly, to communicating with the parents of the kids he teaches. It’s just that the idea of calling or emailing parents directly, in the absence of a compelling need, seems unnecessary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It if ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, the private school where he works uses an advisory system in which students have an adult adviser who serves as the go-between for teachers and students. He avoids sending even friendly emails to parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They can turn into a long back-and-forth correspondence, and I’m already feeling quite pressured juggling all of my school demands with my own life as a parent,” he said. How about receiving messages from parents? “If I saw a parent email in my inbox, my gut reaction would be to shift into ‘defensive’ mode.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turns out, parents feel much the same. “With the boys, my first reaction was generally, ‘Uh oh, what did he do?’ ” said Sarah Sangree, mother of four, about her gut response to a teacher phone call. There was no distinguishable pattern to teacher communication -- some teachers never communicated at all -- so the few times she did get a message, she assumed the worst.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I figured no news was good news,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What the Research Shows\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This failure to communicate between teachers and parents appears to be the norm. In a 2012 study conducted by the National Household Education Surveys Program, 59 percent of parents with children in public school reported having never received a phone call from a teacher. A mere 49 percent of parents who had been contacted by school staff reported being “very satisfied” with the exchange. And although more parents received emails from schools than they had a decade before, much of that increase went to families living above the poverty line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.brown.edu/academics/population-studies/matthew-kraft\">Matthew Kraft\u003c/a>, who carried out the research, calls that discrepancy an “income-based email communication gap,” one of many holes in the ways teachers and parents exchange information. Kraft is an assistant professor of education and economics at Brown, and he has spent years studying the lapses in parent-teacher communication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students suffer most from the lack of quality communication between the two camps, Kraft says. “Our intuition that teacher communication with parents is a good thing is exactly right,” he told me. Several studies corroborate that claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent project on \u003ca href=\"http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mkraft/files/kraft_rogers_teacher-parent_communication_hks_working_paper.pdf\">“light touch” communication\u003c/a> between teachers and parents, Kraft and co-author \u003ca href=\"https://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/todd-rogers\">Todd Rogers\u003c/a> found that at-risk high school kids performed better when their parents received a short email at the end of the week that identified student trouble spots and offered specific, actionable information on how to improve. In another study conducted during the summer at a charter school, Kraft and colleague Shaun Dougherty found that regular phone calls home immediately improved a child’s attendance, behavior and class involvement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If better communication is so effective, why don’t teachers do it more?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Implementation barriers” are the first hurdle, Kraft says, including defunct email addresses and phone numbers, language barriers and outdated address books. Even more troublesome is the absence of norms, in most schools, on the frequency and content of teacher-parent communication. “There’s no clear expectation on best practices, or what that communication should look like,” he explained. The limitations of the clock also factor in: Teachers in large public schools who might be teaching as many as 150 kids a day are hard-pressed to find time for meaningful one-on-one communication with parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not sustainable for all teachers to use parent calls,” Kraft said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How Schools Can Set Norms\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite obstacles, schools can do much to help teachers contact parents, starting with establishing norms for communication that defuse built-in tensions and make allowances for teachers’ time. Having a communication policy that asks teachers to contact parents monthly, say, would subvert parents’ expectations that a phone call from the teacher means trouble at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make outreach more attractive to teachers, schools need to make communication central to the teachers’ work, not just an add-on to their growing list of responsibilities. In practice, that means making time \u003cem>during\u003c/em> the school day for teachers to contact parents, Kraft says. As well, teachers need guidance on the content of those messages and how to say them. And what works for one school won’t work for all, Kraft cautions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of this will be easy. And low-income schools with underachieving students have an additional challenge: These parents can be the hardest to engage. Kimberly, who taught English for three years at a low-performing charter school in New Jersey, said she had to chase down parents to share feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I never had a situation where parents were too involved,” she told me. On back-to-school night, the first opportunity for parents to talk with their children’s teachers in person, just a handful of parents showed up. In Kraft’s own experience teaching in Oakland and Berkeley, he found much the same: “The parents you most need to talk to are the least likely to come,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He believes schools can do better in making this annual event more accessible, convenient and “translatable” for low-income parents. And all parents, no matter the school district, benefit if back-to-school night is early enough in the school year that parents and teachers can get a good start on establishing a partnership that serves the students,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Promise of Text Messaging\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the most underused and promising form of parent-teacher communication, Kraft is clear: It’s texting. “It’s not a rich technology, but it’s a mode of communication that’s the least utilized, with the highest upside,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Texting allows senders to “push” information out to recipients. The ubiquity of phones, even among low-income families, makes them a convenient portal for transmitting vital news, allowing teachers to reach parents with individualized messages. The space limitations that texting imposes, furthermore, encourage quick and direct messaging from teachers. Even simple instructions like “needs to study for test,” or “attendance has slipped” -- some of the “light-touch” messages that produced good outcomes in one of Kraft’s studies -- can be useful. And teachers who text might consider doing the following: alternate positive reinforcement with suggestions for improvement; remind parents about important assignments and upcoming tests; fill in parents on what students are studying in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The combination of our collective wisdom about best practices, on top of the growing body of research on communication, suggests that schools should invest in formal communication systems,” Kraft says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some teachers, of course, communicating with parents comes naturally, system or no system. “I talk to parents all the time,” said Marcy Rosner, a history teacher in Oakland. “My students know that I have a relationship with their parents, which gives them a sense of accountability.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conflict in the classroom diminishes as a result, Rosner said, though the routine communicating devours her free time. Still, she believes that connecting with parents is crucial for the well-being of her students because it builds a support net for the kids. “They have a community of folks who care about them,” Rosner explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we are getting is this haphazard mix of some teachers communicating effectively and others who are not,” Kraft said. “That is not fair to parents or students. We need to help teachers share their best practices and make communication the norm rather than the exception.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s not that high school English teacher Mike S. is \u003cem>opposed,\u003c/em> exactly, to communicating with the parents of the kids he teaches. It’s just that the idea of calling or emailing parents directly, in the absence of a compelling need, seems unnecessary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It if ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, the private school where he works uses an advisory system in which students have an adult adviser who serves as the go-between for teachers and students. He avoids sending even friendly emails to parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They can turn into a long back-and-forth correspondence, and I’m already feeling quite pressured juggling all of my school demands with my own life as a parent,” he said. How about receiving messages from parents? “If I saw a parent email in my inbox, my gut reaction would be to shift into ‘defensive’ mode.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turns out, parents feel much the same. “With the boys, my first reaction was generally, ‘Uh oh, what did he do?’ ” said Sarah Sangree, mother of four, about her gut response to a teacher phone call. There was no distinguishable pattern to teacher communication -- some teachers never communicated at all -- so the few times she did get a message, she assumed the worst.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I figured no news was good news,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What the Research Shows\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This failure to communicate between teachers and parents appears to be the norm. In a 2012 study conducted by the National Household Education Surveys Program, 59 percent of parents with children in public school reported having never received a phone call from a teacher. A mere 49 percent of parents who had been contacted by school staff reported being “very satisfied” with the exchange. And although more parents received emails from schools than they had a decade before, much of that increase went to families living above the poverty line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.brown.edu/academics/population-studies/matthew-kraft\">Matthew Kraft\u003c/a>, who carried out the research, calls that discrepancy an “income-based email communication gap,” one of many holes in the ways teachers and parents exchange information. Kraft is an assistant professor of education and economics at Brown, and he has spent years studying the lapses in parent-teacher communication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students suffer most from the lack of quality communication between the two camps, Kraft says. “Our intuition that teacher communication with parents is a good thing is exactly right,” he told me. Several studies corroborate that claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent project on \u003ca href=\"http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mkraft/files/kraft_rogers_teacher-parent_communication_hks_working_paper.pdf\">“light touch” communication\u003c/a> between teachers and parents, Kraft and co-author \u003ca href=\"https://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/todd-rogers\">Todd Rogers\u003c/a> found that at-risk high school kids performed better when their parents received a short email at the end of the week that identified student trouble spots and offered specific, actionable information on how to improve. In another study conducted during the summer at a charter school, Kraft and colleague Shaun Dougherty found that regular phone calls home immediately improved a child’s attendance, behavior and class involvement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If better communication is so effective, why don’t teachers do it more?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Implementation barriers” are the first hurdle, Kraft says, including defunct email addresses and phone numbers, language barriers and outdated address books. Even more troublesome is the absence of norms, in most schools, on the frequency and content of teacher-parent communication. “There’s no clear expectation on best practices, or what that communication should look like,” he explained. The limitations of the clock also factor in: Teachers in large public schools who might be teaching as many as 150 kids a day are hard-pressed to find time for meaningful one-on-one communication with parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not sustainable for all teachers to use parent calls,” Kraft said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How Schools Can Set Norms\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite obstacles, schools can do much to help teachers contact parents, starting with establishing norms for communication that defuse built-in tensions and make allowances for teachers’ time. Having a communication policy that asks teachers to contact parents monthly, say, would subvert parents’ expectations that a phone call from the teacher means trouble at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make outreach more attractive to teachers, schools need to make communication central to the teachers’ work, not just an add-on to their growing list of responsibilities. In practice, that means making time \u003cem>during\u003c/em> the school day for teachers to contact parents, Kraft says. As well, teachers need guidance on the content of those messages and how to say them. And what works for one school won’t work for all, Kraft cautions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of this will be easy. And low-income schools with underachieving students have an additional challenge: These parents can be the hardest to engage. Kimberly, who taught English for three years at a low-performing charter school in New Jersey, said she had to chase down parents to share feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I never had a situation where parents were too involved,” she told me. On back-to-school night, the first opportunity for parents to talk with their children’s teachers in person, just a handful of parents showed up. In Kraft’s own experience teaching in Oakland and Berkeley, he found much the same: “The parents you most need to talk to are the least likely to come,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He believes schools can do better in making this annual event more accessible, convenient and “translatable” for low-income parents. And all parents, no matter the school district, benefit if back-to-school night is early enough in the school year that parents and teachers can get a good start on establishing a partnership that serves the students,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Promise of Text Messaging\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the most underused and promising form of parent-teacher communication, Kraft is clear: It’s texting. “It’s not a rich technology, but it’s a mode of communication that’s the least utilized, with the highest upside,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Texting allows senders to “push” information out to recipients. The ubiquity of phones, even among low-income families, makes them a convenient portal for transmitting vital news, allowing teachers to reach parents with individualized messages. The space limitations that texting imposes, furthermore, encourage quick and direct messaging from teachers. Even simple instructions like “needs to study for test,” or “attendance has slipped” -- some of the “light-touch” messages that produced good outcomes in one of Kraft’s studies -- can be useful. And teachers who text might consider doing the following: alternate positive reinforcement with suggestions for improvement; remind parents about important assignments and upcoming tests; fill in parents on what students are studying in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The combination of our collective wisdom about best practices, on top of the growing body of research on communication, suggests that schools should invest in formal communication systems,” Kraft says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some teachers, of course, communicating with parents comes naturally, system or no system. “I talk to parents all the time,” said Marcy Rosner, a history teacher in Oakland. “My students know that I have a relationship with their parents, which gives them a sense of accountability.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conflict in the classroom diminishes as a result, Rosner said, though the routine communicating devours her free time. Still, she believes that connecting with parents is crucial for the well-being of her students because it builds a support net for the kids. “They have a community of folks who care about them,” Rosner explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we are getting is this haphazard mix of some teachers communicating effectively and others who are not,” Kraft said. “That is not fair to parents or students. We need to help teachers share their best practices and make communication the norm rather than the exception.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Who doesn't love a class clown? That perfectly timed joke about the ancient Greek poet looking nothing like Homer Simpson is fun for everyone. Unless you're the teacher ... trying to teach a lesson about the \u003cem>Odyssey\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a teacher, the class clown is often your nemesis. I know this from experience: I taught ninth grade last school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They derail lessons, steal the spotlight and, to make matters worse, sometimes they're actually funny. It's not easy enforcing class rules when you're laughing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What if we looked at class clowns differently? What if, instead of seeing them as a nuisance, we saw them as gifted? A little misguided, sure, but still gifted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That change in perspective can make a huge difference for some students and their teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawrence Davis, a senior at Dover High School in Delaware, is the perfect example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He's the quintessential class clown, overconfident and mischievous. But also genuinely personable. He had me laughing from the moment I met him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to him, every teacher loves him. \"They enjoy me,\" he says. \"I'm not gonna say I'm the life of the class, but I bring the class to life.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It hasn't always been that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"He was incorrigible as a freshman,\" remembers Leann Ferguson, who taught Lawrence in her world history class. Back then \"enjoy\" isn't the word she would have used. \"He acted out inappropriately all the time,\" she says. \"He had impulse control issues, couldn't stay in his seat, paced the room.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, he drove her crazy. But she also saw something more. \"He has the most amazing sense of humor,\" she says with a big smile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To her, Lawrence wasn't just another class clown. He was gifted. And his gift was his dynamic personality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This changed the way Ferguson approached Lawrence, which in turn changed the way he saw himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What did she do exactly? Here are three takeaways:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don't Take It Personally\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the moment Ferguson met Lawrence she could tell he wasn't a bad kid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Yeah, you push it, that's just what you do,\" she says, sitting across from Lawrence. He nods in agreement. But she never saw his antics as a personal attack against her and her teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Typically the class clown is not disrupting class for the sake of disrupting class,\" says Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist and professor at Temple University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Class clowns usually act out when they're bored or confused, he says. They would rather stick to something they're good at, like making people laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And most of the time, Ferguson would laugh right along with Lawrence. He was still expected to do the class work and his jokes weren't tolerated if they were at the expense of another student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson learned to take his humor in stride — never berating or belittling Lawrence for how he acted and who he was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"She treated me like I was person,\" Lawrence says, and that took him by surprise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Work With Their Strengths, Not Against Them\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point in our conversation Lawrence interrupted me with a \"really funny\" story he just had to share. Here's a brief summary:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawrence was sitting in class, attentively listening to Ferguson, when his stomach began acting up. So, he stood up and walked over to the open door. Ferguson asked what he was doing. He said: \"I had to fart. I didn't want to disrupt class so I put my butt out the door.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Retelling the story, Lawrence laughs, clearly pleased with himself. I notice Ferguson laughing, too. She points to this story as an example of how funny he is: \"See what I mean? You gotta love this guy. He's hilarious.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be honest, I'm not sure I see what she means. It's just dumb teenage humor, right? But as I was talking with them I realized \u003cem>that's the point\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During moments that most of us would have just felt annoyed, Ferguson saw potential. Amid the fart jokes and color commentary that constantly disrupted her lessons, she saw a gift: He could really command an audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ross Greene, who studies disruptive students, calls that kind of gift a \"raw skill.\" And raw skills \"have to be molded so that they are being used in the best interest of the group,\" he says, which takes patience and a change in perspective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson had the right perspective, she just had to put Lawrence's gift to good use. So she enlisted his help to get the class back on track when they were having a hard time focusing. His approach occasionally involved some questionable classroom language, but he was effective nonetheless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawrence began to understand that he was an example to his classmates. They followed his lead. The better he behaved in class, the better they behaved, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With time he went from antagonist to ally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Encourage, Encourage, Encourage\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson and Lawrence remained close after his freshman year. She really wanted to see him succeed and he knew it. So he'd drop by her classroom on a near daily basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most days he just needed a quick pep talk. He'd tell her he was butting heads with one of his teachers or having issues with another student and she'd remind him to be patient, be flexible, apologize, that sort of stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But last year, his junior year, things got more serious. Lawrence started missing school, a lot of school. He was on the verge of dropping out. Ferguson became a kind of lifeline for Lawrence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She kept tabs on him. She would find any opportunity to let him know that she cared about him, and that was enough. If she wasn't going to give up on him, he wouldn't give up either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now this class clown is on track to graduate. He has a job, he's applying to colleges: He's using his gift for good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Class+Clown+Or+Gifted+Student%3F+It%27s+A+Matter+Of+Perspective&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Who doesn't love a class clown? That perfectly timed joke about the ancient Greek poet looking nothing like Homer Simpson is fun for everyone. Unless you're the teacher ... trying to teach a lesson about the \u003cem>Odyssey\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a teacher, the class clown is often your nemesis. I know this from experience: I taught ninth grade last school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They derail lessons, steal the spotlight and, to make matters worse, sometimes they're actually funny. It's not easy enforcing class rules when you're laughing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What if we looked at class clowns differently? What if, instead of seeing them as a nuisance, we saw them as gifted? A little misguided, sure, but still gifted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That change in perspective can make a huge difference for some students and their teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawrence Davis, a senior at Dover High School in Delaware, is the perfect example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He's the quintessential class clown, overconfident and mischievous. But also genuinely personable. He had me laughing from the moment I met him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to him, every teacher loves him. \"They enjoy me,\" he says. \"I'm not gonna say I'm the life of the class, but I bring the class to life.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It hasn't always been that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"He was incorrigible as a freshman,\" remembers Leann Ferguson, who taught Lawrence in her world history class. Back then \"enjoy\" isn't the word she would have used. \"He acted out inappropriately all the time,\" she says. \"He had impulse control issues, couldn't stay in his seat, paced the room.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, he drove her crazy. But she also saw something more. \"He has the most amazing sense of humor,\" she says with a big smile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To her, Lawrence wasn't just another class clown. He was gifted. And his gift was his dynamic personality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This changed the way Ferguson approached Lawrence, which in turn changed the way he saw himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What did she do exactly? Here are three takeaways:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don't Take It Personally\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the moment Ferguson met Lawrence she could tell he wasn't a bad kid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Yeah, you push it, that's just what you do,\" she says, sitting across from Lawrence. He nods in agreement. But she never saw his antics as a personal attack against her and her teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Typically the class clown is not disrupting class for the sake of disrupting class,\" says Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist and professor at Temple University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Class clowns usually act out when they're bored or confused, he says. They would rather stick to something they're good at, like making people laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And most of the time, Ferguson would laugh right along with Lawrence. He was still expected to do the class work and his jokes weren't tolerated if they were at the expense of another student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson learned to take his humor in stride — never berating or belittling Lawrence for how he acted and who he was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"She treated me like I was person,\" Lawrence says, and that took him by surprise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Work With Their Strengths, Not Against Them\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point in our conversation Lawrence interrupted me with a \"really funny\" story he just had to share. Here's a brief summary:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawrence was sitting in class, attentively listening to Ferguson, when his stomach began acting up. So, he stood up and walked over to the open door. Ferguson asked what he was doing. He said: \"I had to fart. I didn't want to disrupt class so I put my butt out the door.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Retelling the story, Lawrence laughs, clearly pleased with himself. I notice Ferguson laughing, too. She points to this story as an example of how funny he is: \"See what I mean? You gotta love this guy. He's hilarious.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be honest, I'm not sure I see what she means. It's just dumb teenage humor, right? But as I was talking with them I realized \u003cem>that's the point\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During moments that most of us would have just felt annoyed, Ferguson saw potential. Amid the fart jokes and color commentary that constantly disrupted her lessons, she saw a gift: He could really command an audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ross Greene, who studies disruptive students, calls that kind of gift a \"raw skill.\" And raw skills \"have to be molded so that they are being used in the best interest of the group,\" he says, which takes patience and a change in perspective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson had the right perspective, she just had to put Lawrence's gift to good use. So she enlisted his help to get the class back on track when they were having a hard time focusing. His approach occasionally involved some questionable classroom language, but he was effective nonetheless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawrence began to understand that he was an example to his classmates. They followed his lead. The better he behaved in class, the better they behaved, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With time he went from antagonist to ally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Encourage, Encourage, Encourage\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson and Lawrence remained close after his freshman year. She really wanted to see him succeed and he knew it. So he'd drop by her classroom on a near daily basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most days he just needed a quick pep talk. He'd tell her he was butting heads with one of his teachers or having issues with another student and she'd remind him to be patient, be flexible, apologize, that sort of stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But last year, his junior year, things got more serious. Lawrence started missing school, a lot of school. He was on the verge of dropping out. Ferguson became a kind of lifeline for Lawrence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She kept tabs on him. She would find any opportunity to let him know that she cared about him, and that was enough. If she wasn't going to give up on him, he wouldn't give up either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now this class clown is on track to graduate. He has a job, he's applying to colleges: He's using his gift for good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Class+Clown+Or+Gifted+Student%3F+It%27s+A+Matter+Of+Perspective&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Stressed Out! What Can Teachers Do About It?",
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"content": "\u003cp>Marcy Rosner started her career as a college counselor, but decided to switch to teaching when she realized her favorite part of the job was working with students. She lives in Oakland and teaches U.S. and world history to 10\u003csup>th-\u003c/sup>graders at a nearby charter school. Now in her fourth year as a teacher, she appreciates how much she didn’t understand about the work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Teaching is infinitely more difficult than I pictured,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The challenges most teachers encounter are well known. In exchange for modest pay and marginal status, teachers are expected to inspire a love of learning among their students, introduce exciting new technologies and be attentive to distinctive learning and emotional styles -- while somehow carrying out state and federal educational standards, managing behavior problems and keeping standardized test scores respectable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Rosner, these and other pressures interfered with her ability to teach effectively. Tension between veteran and new teachers insinuated itself into the classrooms. Though the charter management organization that ran her school encouraged flexibility, it lacked the resources to transform her classroom environment, which Rosner called “oppressive” for students and for teachers. And delivering daily lectures to squirrelly 15-year-olds triggered performance anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So much is expected of me, I have to perform in front of 30 10\u003csup>th-\u003c/sup>graders,” Rosner said. “Sometimes I don’t feel prepared to do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/21/u-s-teachers-job-satisfaction-craters-report/\">2013 survey\u003c/a> of teachers conducted by MetLife suggests that many educators share Rosner’s strain. Fifty-one percent of teachers surveyed admitted to feeling “great stress” during the school week, up from 36 percent in 1985. But emotional support systems in schools are lacking, according to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.srcd.org/sites/default/files/documents/spr_264_final_2.pdf\">Society for Research in Child Development\u003c/a>, and scant professional training addresses teachers’ chronic stress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While teachers’ emotional discomfort is damaging enough for them, it also, some research shows, has an impact on student learning. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150211084106.htm\">small study\u003c/a> conducted by Lieny Jeon and others at Ohio State University in 2014 found that unhappy teachers were more apt to have students -- in this case 3-year-olds — with behavior problems. Researchers at Arizona State University studying the effects of teacher depression on 523 third-grade students found that children who were weakest academically \u003ca href=\"https://clas.asu.edu/asu-study-finds-teacher-depression-affects-students-math-skills\">suffered most\u003c/a> from a distant or dejected teacher, especially in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the absence of institutional support, teachers have come up with their own ways of reducing the unease that often comes with their jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Getting back to first principles\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>When Rosner feels especially wound up about her work, she reminds herself why she wanted to teach. Rather than dwell on office politics or what’s missing in the school, she consciously thinks about her students. “Lots of teachers focus on the injustice of something, or the failure of the administration, instead of how we’re going to prepare our students for college,” she said. “It’s really easy to forget why we went into teaching.\" Clearing her mind of petty distractions and concentrating on the students helps Rosner remain centered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Building relationships with the students\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>Last year 600 teachers in Houston took part in an innovative menu of programs designed to help them understand and improve their relationships with students. \u003ca href=\"http://fueledschools.com/wordpress/\">FuelEd\u003c/a>, founded by Megan Marcus three years ago, partners with schools to help teachers build these connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Learning happens through relationships,” Marcus said, yet teachers aren’t taught how to foster those personal bonds that allow for connection and genuine learning. Job stresses, the Type A personality many teachers bring to class, and the lack of professional training in identifying and responding to personal triggers also interfere, Marcus said. To correct that imbalance, FuelEd offers workshops on active listening, emotional intelligence and communication skills, and provides one-on-one counseling sessions to teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosner said that paying close attention to student -- and parent -- relationships made a difference in her class. “I call parents all the time,” she said. “My students know that I have a relationship with their parents, so there’s a sense of accountability.\" Rosner strives to build a community with the students and their parents, so that the kids understand that they matter, and that grownups are paying attention. One problem with this approach? “It’s a lot of work,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Take part in teacher wellness programs\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"http://www.psyc.jmu.edu/gradpsyc/people/kipps-vaughan.html\">Deborah Kipps-Vaughan\u003c/a>, associate professor of psychology at James Madison University, began offering wellness training for teachers when a school superintendent asked her why teachers in the district seemed so miserable and upset. She had seen for herself an uptick in teachers’ anxiety, beginning when standardized testing and evaluations began to take over the classroom. “Teachers experience a lack of sense of ownership of their classrooms, and being part of a standardized system,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, she created a program at an elementary school that focuses on teachers’ common challenges: working with difficult parents, handling conflicts, and developing communication and problem-solving strategies. Teachers are divided into small groups and are encouraged to reframe how they interpret their mistakes and to develop healthy coping mechanisms, like exercise or yoga. The group discussions alone reduce stress, Kipps-Vaughan said, because most participants take comfort in the universality of their difficulties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, Kipps-Vaughan has developed wellness programs for 10 other schools and has presented the program nationally; she shares it freely with interested schools. Kipps-Vaughan believes schools should make stress reduction a priority for teachers. “The purpose of teaching is instruction,” she said. “That gets put aside if people are suffering.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Using technology to connect with other teachers\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>What lifted the cloud for Alexa Schlechter, then an English teacher at Norwalk High School in Connecticut, was engaging with other teachers online. She started by reading teachers’ blogs, first soaking up their ideas and then reaching out to ask questions. Schlechter was reluctant at first to dive into social media, but gave in when a colleague promised that using Twitter would be the best move for her career and her sanity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a moment in my professional life that really changed everything for me,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schlechter found a huge community of educators on Twitter with whom she could ask questions and share problems. One popular Twitter feed, \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BFC530?lang=en\">#BFC530\u003c/a> -- for Breakfast Club, 5:30 -- invites teachers to “chat” for a few minutes before the day begins about one education-related question. “Once I connected with like-minded and supportive teachers who had amazing ideas -- I stopped feeling so isolated,” Schlechter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Focusing on preparation\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>What happens before, between and after classes can be as challenging for teachers as anything that happens within the school room. “You’re your own secretary, your own supply manager and sometimes your own supervisor,” said Heather Lukeman, who has been teaching chemistry to high school kids for 12 years. “What happens in class is the least stressful part of the day,” she added. Being prepared and organized shrinks stress, she said, and allows her to concentrate more fully on the students while in class. For Rosner, disciplined preparation serves a similar purpose. When she’s confident that her lesson is rich and thorough, her performance anxiety wanes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Switching schools\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>If administrators are rigid and unsympathetic, standardized testing mandates too onerous and the workload unbearable, some teachers look for relief in other schools. “How did I manage the stress?” asks Eleanor Lear, who taught English to hundreds of public high school kids in Summit, New Jersey, and Hood River, Oregon, before switching to private schools. “Poorly. I drank a lot of wine. I lowered my professional standards. And then I left the public school arena,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, she teaches fewer students at a private school and works part time.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Educators are finding ways to deal with stress by developing social and emotional tools for families and connecting with other teachers on Twitter chats. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Marcy Rosner started her career as a college counselor, but decided to switch to teaching when she realized her favorite part of the job was working with students. She lives in Oakland and teaches U.S. and world history to 10\u003csup>th-\u003c/sup>graders at a nearby charter school. Now in her fourth year as a teacher, she appreciates how much she didn’t understand about the work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Teaching is infinitely more difficult than I pictured,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The challenges most teachers encounter are well known. In exchange for modest pay and marginal status, teachers are expected to inspire a love of learning among their students, introduce exciting new technologies and be attentive to distinctive learning and emotional styles -- while somehow carrying out state and federal educational standards, managing behavior problems and keeping standardized test scores respectable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Rosner, these and other pressures interfered with her ability to teach effectively. Tension between veteran and new teachers insinuated itself into the classrooms. Though the charter management organization that ran her school encouraged flexibility, it lacked the resources to transform her classroom environment, which Rosner called “oppressive” for students and for teachers. And delivering daily lectures to squirrelly 15-year-olds triggered performance anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So much is expected of me, I have to perform in front of 30 10\u003csup>th-\u003c/sup>graders,” Rosner said. “Sometimes I don’t feel prepared to do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/21/u-s-teachers-job-satisfaction-craters-report/\">2013 survey\u003c/a> of teachers conducted by MetLife suggests that many educators share Rosner’s strain. Fifty-one percent of teachers surveyed admitted to feeling “great stress” during the school week, up from 36 percent in 1985. But emotional support systems in schools are lacking, according to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.srcd.org/sites/default/files/documents/spr_264_final_2.pdf\">Society for Research in Child Development\u003c/a>, and scant professional training addresses teachers’ chronic stress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While teachers’ emotional discomfort is damaging enough for them, it also, some research shows, has an impact on student learning. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150211084106.htm\">small study\u003c/a> conducted by Lieny Jeon and others at Ohio State University in 2014 found that unhappy teachers were more apt to have students -- in this case 3-year-olds — with behavior problems. Researchers at Arizona State University studying the effects of teacher depression on 523 third-grade students found that children who were weakest academically \u003ca href=\"https://clas.asu.edu/asu-study-finds-teacher-depression-affects-students-math-skills\">suffered most\u003c/a> from a distant or dejected teacher, especially in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the absence of institutional support, teachers have come up with their own ways of reducing the unease that often comes with their jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Getting back to first principles\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>When Rosner feels especially wound up about her work, she reminds herself why she wanted to teach. Rather than dwell on office politics or what’s missing in the school, she consciously thinks about her students. “Lots of teachers focus on the injustice of something, or the failure of the administration, instead of how we’re going to prepare our students for college,” she said. “It’s really easy to forget why we went into teaching.\" Clearing her mind of petty distractions and concentrating on the students helps Rosner remain centered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Building relationships with the students\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>Last year 600 teachers in Houston took part in an innovative menu of programs designed to help them understand and improve their relationships with students. \u003ca href=\"http://fueledschools.com/wordpress/\">FuelEd\u003c/a>, founded by Megan Marcus three years ago, partners with schools to help teachers build these connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Learning happens through relationships,” Marcus said, yet teachers aren’t taught how to foster those personal bonds that allow for connection and genuine learning. Job stresses, the Type A personality many teachers bring to class, and the lack of professional training in identifying and responding to personal triggers also interfere, Marcus said. To correct that imbalance, FuelEd offers workshops on active listening, emotional intelligence and communication skills, and provides one-on-one counseling sessions to teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosner said that paying close attention to student -- and parent -- relationships made a difference in her class. “I call parents all the time,” she said. “My students know that I have a relationship with their parents, so there’s a sense of accountability.\" Rosner strives to build a community with the students and their parents, so that the kids understand that they matter, and that grownups are paying attention. One problem with this approach? “It’s a lot of work,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Take part in teacher wellness programs\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"http://www.psyc.jmu.edu/gradpsyc/people/kipps-vaughan.html\">Deborah Kipps-Vaughan\u003c/a>, associate professor of psychology at James Madison University, began offering wellness training for teachers when a school superintendent asked her why teachers in the district seemed so miserable and upset. She had seen for herself an uptick in teachers’ anxiety, beginning when standardized testing and evaluations began to take over the classroom. “Teachers experience a lack of sense of ownership of their classrooms, and being part of a standardized system,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response, she created a program at an elementary school that focuses on teachers’ common challenges: working with difficult parents, handling conflicts, and developing communication and problem-solving strategies. Teachers are divided into small groups and are encouraged to reframe how they interpret their mistakes and to develop healthy coping mechanisms, like exercise or yoga. The group discussions alone reduce stress, Kipps-Vaughan said, because most participants take comfort in the universality of their difficulties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, Kipps-Vaughan has developed wellness programs for 10 other schools and has presented the program nationally; she shares it freely with interested schools. Kipps-Vaughan believes schools should make stress reduction a priority for teachers. “The purpose of teaching is instruction,” she said. “That gets put aside if people are suffering.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Using technology to connect with other teachers\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>What lifted the cloud for Alexa Schlechter, then an English teacher at Norwalk High School in Connecticut, was engaging with other teachers online. She started by reading teachers’ blogs, first soaking up their ideas and then reaching out to ask questions. Schlechter was reluctant at first to dive into social media, but gave in when a colleague promised that using Twitter would be the best move for her career and her sanity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a moment in my professional life that really changed everything for me,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schlechter found a huge community of educators on Twitter with whom she could ask questions and share problems. One popular Twitter feed, \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BFC530?lang=en\">#BFC530\u003c/a> -- for Breakfast Club, 5:30 -- invites teachers to “chat” for a few minutes before the day begins about one education-related question. “Once I connected with like-minded and supportive teachers who had amazing ideas -- I stopped feeling so isolated,” Schlechter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Focusing on preparation\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>What happens before, between and after classes can be as challenging for teachers as anything that happens within the school room. “You’re your own secretary, your own supply manager and sometimes your own supervisor,” said Heather Lukeman, who has been teaching chemistry to high school kids for 12 years. “What happens in class is the least stressful part of the day,” she added. Being prepared and organized shrinks stress, she said, and allows her to concentrate more fully on the students while in class. For Rosner, disciplined preparation serves a similar purpose. When she’s confident that her lesson is rich and thorough, her performance anxiety wanes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Switching schools\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>If administrators are rigid and unsympathetic, standardized testing mandates too onerous and the workload unbearable, some teachers look for relief in other schools. “How did I manage the stress?” asks Eleanor Lear, who taught English to hundreds of public high school kids in Summit, New Jersey, and Hood River, Oregon, before switching to private schools. “Poorly. I drank a lot of wine. I lowered my professional standards. And then I left the public school arena,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Books-to-Games: Transforming Classic Novels Into Role Playing Adventures",
"title": "Books-to-Games: Transforming Classic Novels Into Role Playing Adventures",
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"content": "\u003cp>Authors, editors and publishers spend months and years refining a book until it’s ready to be published. That publication date is part of the book’s copyright and marks the completion of the book. But what if a completed book was just the beginning of the story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through tabletop role-playing games, educators are beginning to tinker with traditional works of literature and, in the process, reimagine how writing and character development are taught. Take, for example, \"Fahrenheit 451\" by Ray Bradbury. Students in countless classrooms have read the classic 1953 tale of free speech, government censorship and critical thinking. Teachers have assigned book reports, worksheets and discussions. It’s an approach that’s used everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kipglazer\">Kip Glazer\u003c/a> taught English at Independence High School (Kern High School District) last year, she wanted to reimagine the traditional way of teaching \"Fahrenheit 451\" by turning the experience of developing English literacy skills into a game. She broke up elements within the book into game components: imagine a game board depicting various scenes (Guy Montag’s house, the fire station, the old woman’s house), characters within that book (Montag, Clarisse McClellan, Mildred Montag, Faber, etc.) and the things with which they interact (books, television screens, fire, medication). Then Glazer introduces new situations and characters, charging students to use the gamified book elements to create new narratives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the story’s elements are liberated from a linear text, students are able to apply their creativity and critical thinking skills to manipulate the story based on a deep understanding of the book. And, as with any game modification, students must understand the existing story thoroughly before they can start playing its elements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While they’re playing the game, students have to make decisions based on what the character would or would not do based on what’s in the book,” said Glazer. “They’re making arguments. They have to see it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Dungeons and Dragons,\" released in 1974, is probably the best known tabletop role-playing game. Many players credit D&D for helping them develop skills they’ve applied to other areas of life, such as interpersonal relationships, the interpretation of rules and the development of creative endeavors. Comedian \u003ca href=\"http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/dungeons-dragons-online/537989p1.html\">Stephen Colbert \u003c/a>and actor \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-Adventure-Celebration-Retrospective/dp/0786934980\">Vin Diesel\u003c/a> are avid players. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz includes games in his acclaimed book, \"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.\" He told the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/books/dungeons-dragons-has-influenced-a-generation-of-writers.html?_r=0\">New York Times\u003c/a> that playing D&D functioned as “a sort of storytelling apprenticeship.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How Tabletop RPG Works in the Classroom\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Kip Glazer’s class, students must build up the foundation of understanding they will need to become creators of a side narrative. Students prepare by doing research. They read and reread the book, examine the context that inspired the story -- such as the Cold War in the case of \"Farenheit 451\" -- discuss their findings and write about them. Each story element is continually examined through daily writing assignments that push students to reflect on how the different narrative elements build a compelling story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42559\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2489px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-42559\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel.jpg\" alt=\"Lucifer Igneel, a character created by a student in Kip Glazer's class, during the tabletop role playing game unit of Farenheit 451. \" width=\"2489\" height=\"1734\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel.jpg 2489w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-400x279.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-800x557.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-1440x1003.jpg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-1180x822.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-960x669.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2489px) 100vw, 2489px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucifer Igneel, a character created by a student in Kip Glazer's class, during the tabletop role playing game unit of Farenheit 451. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kip Glazer)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a California public school teacher, Glazer has to fit each activity to meet Common Core State Standards. Role-playing games are certainly not traditional, but Glazer says the writing, critical thinking and analysis involved align perfectly with English Language Arts standards. Students are researching the historical period of the novel’s setting, making arguments about what a character would do and conveying details about the characters in writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glazer said her students write about 2,700 words per week during the game. When they’re ready to add new characters and situations, those elements have to make sense within the world of the story. Students must figure out how the pieces interact with one another, strengthening their \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/16/social-and-emotional-benefits-of-video-games-metacognition-and-relationships/\">systems thinking and metacognitive skills\u003c/a> along the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One student created a character named Lucifer Igneel to add to his game based on \"Farenheit 451.\" Here is the student's description of the new character, as it relates to the book:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>He has a Pickelhaube helmet and wears a long, black leather coat, with the bottoms of it tattered and burned itself. The coat has an insignia of a Chinese dragon surrounded by flames, which is why Montag has a salamander on his arm (Bradbury 4), showing that he is the under-leveled. Igneel, as well as his dark stature and evil spirit, ironically, he speaks in Biblical terms, which is where Captain Beatty obtains his choice of words and phrases from, such as, “You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel” (Bradbury 35). No one knows where he disappeared to, but the crimes roaming around are told to be his doings.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>“Role-playing and creating as an instructional process fits perfectly in literature education,” said Glazer. She has used games to teach poetry and plays as well, including the \"Importance of Being Earnest,\" by Oscar Wilde. One of Glazer’s favorite aspects of this teaching approach is that tabletop games require several players, introducing a social learning element to the assignment. Students work together to test assumptions about characters. They also play together in real life. And unlike digital role-playing games, tabletop games can be made with little to no money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42561\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1912px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-42561 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board.jpg\" alt='A game board created by Kip Glazer for the \"Farenheit 451\" unit taught via tabletop role playing games. ' width=\"1912\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board.jpg 1912w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-400x402.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-800x803.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-1440x1446.jpg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-1180x1185.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-960x964.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-50x50.jpg 50w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1912px) 100vw, 1912px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A game board created by Kip Glazer's students for the \"Farenheit 451\" unit. Students learned about the story through tabletop role-playing games. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kip Glazer)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Glazer, who did not grow up playing RPGs, first got the idea to try them out in her class after seeing the work of \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/thergenrade\">Trent Hergenrader\u003c/a> at a \u003ca href=\"http://www.gameslearningsociety.org/\">Games Learning Society \u003c/a>conference. He uses RPGs to teach creative writing at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and before that, at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Hergenrader has found that if he encourages his students to think of their writing as a game, with playing pieces that can be separated from one another, they feel more freedom to manipulate character, scene and story in surprising ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a great creative writing device, but Hergenrader has also found that the process requires deep analysis of text and lends itself well to teaching literature. He has also taught a games version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works and George R.R. Martin's \"\u003ca href=\"http://talesfromkingslanding.wikispaces.com\">A Song of Ice and Fire\u003c/a>.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The experience turns out to be so profound in the classroom, you want everybody to do it,” Hergenrader said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glazer, Hergenrader and educators who use games in the class have all identified the ability of games to engage and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/09/surprising-insights-how-teachers-use-games-in-the-classroom/\">excite students\u003c/a> who may not have typically been interested in class. Dramatically changing the instruction style from what is “typical” often connects with disengaged learners and helps them to feel like a valued part of the class community, and thus more comfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By introducing this strategy, I was able to invite a lot of participation from students who otherwise would not have revealed themselves to be leaders,” said Glazer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Taking on Roles In Real Life\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, tabletop RPGs helped Kelsey Frohna branch out academically. She entered school as an avid reader, and planned on pursuing an English degree. Assignments up to that point had largely involved attending lectures, reading works of literature and writing analyses of the readings, activities that were largely solitary in nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fronha describers herself as the shy, quiet student in class. When she enrolled in Hergenrader’s digital storytelling and role-playing class about four years ago, her experience of literature was turned upside down. The game they created and played was called “\u003ca href=\"http://hellwaukee.wikispaces.com/ENG+236+-+Digital+Storytelling+%26+Role-Playing\">Hellwaukee\u003c/a>,” set in post-apocalyptic Milwaukee. Frohna took on the role of a bear named Ursa. She and her teammates created post-apocalyptic Milwaukee by writing about the scenery, elements and characters. Hergenrader was the game master, introducing new situations that would complicate their worlds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Treating a story as a game created an opportunity for Frohna to become an active participant in the story. She found that manipulating characters pushed her understanding of the elements of a story, and made her think more creatively about environment and character attributes. At the core of role-playing games is a deeper examination of character. Students are building off an intimate knowledge of what the character \u003cem>would\u003c/em> do, based on everything she has gleaned about the world the character embodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there was the social element of learning with games. Many of the discussions about what a character would do happened in the classroom with peers. Students had to debate what was possible, and understanding the game system became a group activity. Frohna said she had spent much of her school life on her own, learning by herself, but creating a game in her class introduced her to how exciting collaboration could be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I never realized how many things you needed in a world. A role of the dice can give you good luck and bad luck.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unexpectedly, however, Frohna found a way to apply what she learned in the classroom to her real life. Frohna says the role-playing game came in handy when she found herself in a surprise situation at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day at her Old Navy job, she found herself elevated to a managerial role after the absence of her manager. The shy student was hesitant at first, but then she reminded herself of what she learned through RPGs. “After playing games in Trent’s class, I could become someone different and I was able to take that into work.” She thought about her boss as a character and stepped into that role.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m like, what would he do? I sort of put myself in his shoes,” Frohna said. She realized her boss is more outgoing and stands up for people, so she tried to embody those qualities, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stepping into that role for the first time helped her gain the confidence to take on new roles in her life without thinking of that transition with so much intention, Frohna said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The use of tabletop RPGs in the classroom is still rare, but teachers investing time and energy into turning traditional activities into games are seeing rewarding results. Students who had previously been uninterested in school are engaged, and the experience of making the game includes lessons applicable in students’ lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s still relatively rare to see role-playing games in the classroom, in part because of perceived social stigma, but Glazer says her high school students don’t see it that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That has not been a challenge for me at all,” Glazer says of any reluctance to play RPGs in class. “That shows they’re really tired of their typical English class. As soon as I say, 'We’re going to create an RPG for this unit,' they say, ‘As long as you’re not reading to me, I’m totally cool with it.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Authors, editors and publishers spend months and years refining a book until it’s ready to be published. That publication date is part of the book’s copyright and marks the completion of the book. But what if a completed book was just the beginning of the story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through tabletop role-playing games, educators are beginning to tinker with traditional works of literature and, in the process, reimagine how writing and character development are taught. Take, for example, \"Fahrenheit 451\" by Ray Bradbury. Students in countless classrooms have read the classic 1953 tale of free speech, government censorship and critical thinking. Teachers have assigned book reports, worksheets and discussions. It’s an approach that’s used everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kipglazer\">Kip Glazer\u003c/a> taught English at Independence High School (Kern High School District) last year, she wanted to reimagine the traditional way of teaching \"Fahrenheit 451\" by turning the experience of developing English literacy skills into a game. She broke up elements within the book into game components: imagine a game board depicting various scenes (Guy Montag’s house, the fire station, the old woman’s house), characters within that book (Montag, Clarisse McClellan, Mildred Montag, Faber, etc.) and the things with which they interact (books, television screens, fire, medication). Then Glazer introduces new situations and characters, charging students to use the gamified book elements to create new narratives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the story’s elements are liberated from a linear text, students are able to apply their creativity and critical thinking skills to manipulate the story based on a deep understanding of the book. And, as with any game modification, students must understand the existing story thoroughly before they can start playing its elements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While they’re playing the game, students have to make decisions based on what the character would or would not do based on what’s in the book,” said Glazer. “They’re making arguments. They have to see it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Dungeons and Dragons,\" released in 1974, is probably the best known tabletop role-playing game. Many players credit D&D for helping them develop skills they’ve applied to other areas of life, such as interpersonal relationships, the interpretation of rules and the development of creative endeavors. Comedian \u003ca href=\"http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/dungeons-dragons-online/537989p1.html\">Stephen Colbert \u003c/a>and actor \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-Adventure-Celebration-Retrospective/dp/0786934980\">Vin Diesel\u003c/a> are avid players. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz includes games in his acclaimed book, \"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.\" He told the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/books/dungeons-dragons-has-influenced-a-generation-of-writers.html?_r=0\">New York Times\u003c/a> that playing D&D functioned as “a sort of storytelling apprenticeship.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How Tabletop RPG Works in the Classroom\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Kip Glazer’s class, students must build up the foundation of understanding they will need to become creators of a side narrative. Students prepare by doing research. They read and reread the book, examine the context that inspired the story -- such as the Cold War in the case of \"Farenheit 451\" -- discuss their findings and write about them. Each story element is continually examined through daily writing assignments that push students to reflect on how the different narrative elements build a compelling story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42559\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2489px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-42559\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel.jpg\" alt=\"Lucifer Igneel, a character created by a student in Kip Glazer's class, during the tabletop role playing game unit of Farenheit 451. \" width=\"2489\" height=\"1734\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel.jpg 2489w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-400x279.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-800x557.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-1440x1003.jpg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-1180x822.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Lucifer-Igneel-960x669.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2489px) 100vw, 2489px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucifer Igneel, a character created by a student in Kip Glazer's class, during the tabletop role playing game unit of Farenheit 451. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kip Glazer)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a California public school teacher, Glazer has to fit each activity to meet Common Core State Standards. Role-playing games are certainly not traditional, but Glazer says the writing, critical thinking and analysis involved align perfectly with English Language Arts standards. Students are researching the historical period of the novel’s setting, making arguments about what a character would do and conveying details about the characters in writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glazer said her students write about 2,700 words per week during the game. When they’re ready to add new characters and situations, those elements have to make sense within the world of the story. Students must figure out how the pieces interact with one another, strengthening their \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/16/social-and-emotional-benefits-of-video-games-metacognition-and-relationships/\">systems thinking and metacognitive skills\u003c/a> along the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One student created a character named Lucifer Igneel to add to his game based on \"Farenheit 451.\" Here is the student's description of the new character, as it relates to the book:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>He has a Pickelhaube helmet and wears a long, black leather coat, with the bottoms of it tattered and burned itself. The coat has an insignia of a Chinese dragon surrounded by flames, which is why Montag has a salamander on his arm (Bradbury 4), showing that he is the under-leveled. Igneel, as well as his dark stature and evil spirit, ironically, he speaks in Biblical terms, which is where Captain Beatty obtains his choice of words and phrases from, such as, “You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel” (Bradbury 35). No one knows where he disappeared to, but the crimes roaming around are told to be his doings.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>“Role-playing and creating as an instructional process fits perfectly in literature education,” said Glazer. She has used games to teach poetry and plays as well, including the \"Importance of Being Earnest,\" by Oscar Wilde. One of Glazer’s favorite aspects of this teaching approach is that tabletop games require several players, introducing a social learning element to the assignment. Students work together to test assumptions about characters. They also play together in real life. And unlike digital role-playing games, tabletop games can be made with little to no money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_42561\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1912px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-42561 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board.jpg\" alt='A game board created by Kip Glazer for the \"Farenheit 451\" unit taught via tabletop role playing games. ' width=\"1912\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board.jpg 1912w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-400x402.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-800x803.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-1440x1446.jpg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-1180x1185.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-960x964.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-50x50.jpg 50w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/10/Glazer-Board-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1912px) 100vw, 1912px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A game board created by Kip Glazer's students for the \"Farenheit 451\" unit. Students learned about the story through tabletop role-playing games. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kip Glazer)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Glazer, who did not grow up playing RPGs, first got the idea to try them out in her class after seeing the work of \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/thergenrade\">Trent Hergenrader\u003c/a> at a \u003ca href=\"http://www.gameslearningsociety.org/\">Games Learning Society \u003c/a>conference. He uses RPGs to teach creative writing at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and before that, at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Hergenrader has found that if he encourages his students to think of their writing as a game, with playing pieces that can be separated from one another, they feel more freedom to manipulate character, scene and story in surprising ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a great creative writing device, but Hergenrader has also found that the process requires deep analysis of text and lends itself well to teaching literature. He has also taught a games version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works and George R.R. Martin's \"\u003ca href=\"http://talesfromkingslanding.wikispaces.com\">A Song of Ice and Fire\u003c/a>.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The experience turns out to be so profound in the classroom, you want everybody to do it,” Hergenrader said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glazer, Hergenrader and educators who use games in the class have all identified the ability of games to engage and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/09/surprising-insights-how-teachers-use-games-in-the-classroom/\">excite students\u003c/a> who may not have typically been interested in class. Dramatically changing the instruction style from what is “typical” often connects with disengaged learners and helps them to feel like a valued part of the class community, and thus more comfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By introducing this strategy, I was able to invite a lot of participation from students who otherwise would not have revealed themselves to be leaders,” said Glazer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Taking on Roles In Real Life\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, tabletop RPGs helped Kelsey Frohna branch out academically. She entered school as an avid reader, and planned on pursuing an English degree. Assignments up to that point had largely involved attending lectures, reading works of literature and writing analyses of the readings, activities that were largely solitary in nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fronha describers herself as the shy, quiet student in class. When she enrolled in Hergenrader’s digital storytelling and role-playing class about four years ago, her experience of literature was turned upside down. The game they created and played was called “\u003ca href=\"http://hellwaukee.wikispaces.com/ENG+236+-+Digital+Storytelling+%26+Role-Playing\">Hellwaukee\u003c/a>,” set in post-apocalyptic Milwaukee. Frohna took on the role of a bear named Ursa. She and her teammates created post-apocalyptic Milwaukee by writing about the scenery, elements and characters. Hergenrader was the game master, introducing new situations that would complicate their worlds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Treating a story as a game created an opportunity for Frohna to become an active participant in the story. She found that manipulating characters pushed her understanding of the elements of a story, and made her think more creatively about environment and character attributes. At the core of role-playing games is a deeper examination of character. Students are building off an intimate knowledge of what the character \u003cem>would\u003c/em> do, based on everything she has gleaned about the world the character embodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there was the social element of learning with games. Many of the discussions about what a character would do happened in the classroom with peers. Students had to debate what was possible, and understanding the game system became a group activity. Frohna said she had spent much of her school life on her own, learning by herself, but creating a game in her class introduced her to how exciting collaboration could be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I never realized how many things you needed in a world. A role of the dice can give you good luck and bad luck.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unexpectedly, however, Frohna found a way to apply what she learned in the classroom to her real life. Frohna says the role-playing game came in handy when she found herself in a surprise situation at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day at her Old Navy job, she found herself elevated to a managerial role after the absence of her manager. The shy student was hesitant at first, but then she reminded herself of what she learned through RPGs. “After playing games in Trent’s class, I could become someone different and I was able to take that into work.” She thought about her boss as a character and stepped into that role.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m like, what would he do? I sort of put myself in his shoes,” Frohna said. She realized her boss is more outgoing and stands up for people, so she tried to embody those qualities, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stepping into that role for the first time helped her gain the confidence to take on new roles in her life without thinking of that transition with so much intention, Frohna said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The use of tabletop RPGs in the classroom is still rare, but teachers investing time and energy into turning traditional activities into games are seeing rewarding results. Students who had previously been uninterested in school are engaged, and the experience of making the game includes lessons applicable in students’ lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s still relatively rare to see role-playing games in the classroom, in part because of perceived social stigma, but Glazer says her high school students don’t see it that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That has not been a challenge for me at all,” Glazer says of any reluctance to play RPGs in class. “That shows they’re really tired of their typical English class. As soon as I say, 'We’re going to create an RPG for this unit,' they say, ‘As long as you’re not reading to me, I’m totally cool with it.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
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},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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}
},
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"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
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"id": "city-arts",
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"order": 1
},
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"here-and-now": {
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"order": 15
},
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
},
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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