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"disqusTitle": "What's Your Learning Disposition? How to Foster Students' Mindsets",
"title": "What's Your Learning Disposition? How to Foster Students' Mindsets",
"headTitle": "GROWTH MINDSET | MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34741\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34741\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903.jpg\" alt=\"3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\" credit=\"Flickr: fhwrdh\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap\" style=\"text-align: left\">Stanford psychologist \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/11/can-everyone-be-smart-at-everything/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindsets\u003c/a> has dominated much of the attention around how students can influence their own learning. But there are other ways to help students tap into their own motivation, too. Here are a few other important mindsets to consider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Belonging to an academic community:\u003c/strong> Feeling connected to adults and peers at school intellectually, not just socially, through an academic community, is a strong motivator. Feeling a sense of belonging in an intellectual community helps students interpret setbacks as a natural part of learning, and not as a personal deficit that sets them apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Belief in the likelihood of success:\u003c/strong> Students’ belief in their own self-efficacy is a better predictor of academic success than measured ability. Students need to feel that they're likely to succeed in order to sustain the hard work of learning something challenging. When students believe they'll fail, they often don’t invest in the work or devalue the task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The work has meaning and value:\u003c/strong> The brain naturally looks for connections. When students find academic work to be relevant to lives, interests, and concerns they're much more likely to work on a task in a sustained way and to perform well. It takes much more energy to focus attention on a task that does not have direct value to the student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Belief that abilities and intelligence can grow with effort:\u003c/strong> Known as a growth mindset, (Carol Dweck's theory we refer to above) if students believe the brain is a muscle that must be exercised, they're more likely to interpret setbacks as opportunities to learn and improve. This mindset is associated with the joy of mastering a task, rather than learning for a grade or to outperform others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FOSTERING ACADEMIC MINDSETS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools can encourage students to develop these mindsets, but it requires an intentional focus. “One thing we like to do as a school is celebrate kids taking risks and failing and then learning from those failures,” said Stephen Mahoney, principal of \u003ca href=\"http://www.springfieldrenaissanceschool.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Springfield Renaissance School\u003c/a> on a \u003ca href=\"http://dlmooc.deeper-learning.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Deeper Learning MOOC panel\u003c/a>. The majority of Renaissance students receive free and reduced price lunch and 80 percent are students of color. Even the school’s honor roll is based on effort and perseverance rather than on objective performance. Setting school values in this way sends a strong message to students about what educators see as the most valuable skills school can teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"936a5b0cc610cbc6837d624b55af8462\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To help students see learning as a process, their assessments need to reflect the same ethos, including lots of informal feedback so students can improve on their work. “If they did something not very well, and they only get one chance to show what they know, that’s not a very good way to foster a growth mindset,” said \u003ca href=\"https://uei.uchicago.edu/about/staff/camille-farrington\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Camille Farrington\u003c/a>, research associate at University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research and author of 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\">white paper \u003c/a>on academic mindsets for the Hewlett Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To avoid that trap, schools can structure failure into the school culture, as Springfield Renaissance has done, so students don’t see a misstep as the end of their ability to succeed. “When students start reading the tea leaves and realize it’s impossible for them to succeed, they give up,” Farrington said. In points-based grading systems, students know when they’ve reached a point at which they can no longer pass, and stop trying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Students always have mindsets and they're always in the process of affirming the mindsets they already have,” Farrington said. “If they believe that they don’t belong or they can’t really do it then they’ll be looking for confirmation that that’s true.” It’s the teacher’s job to interrupt that negative mindset and turn it around to something positive and adaptive. Researchers have seen the impact of small, experimental interventions on a limited scale, so teachers who see kids every day can have a much bigger effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make assessment feel worthwhile to students, and progressive in nature, educators can allow students to show their learning in multiple ways and at multiple stages in the learning process. Allowing students to assess themselves as part of the process creates a thoughtful, recurring time for them to look at their own growth and set new goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It also helps to give very specific feedback using behavior language. There’s a big difference between, “good job, you got the right answer,” and feedback that points out specific qualities in the work that were well done and how that connects to one of the academic mindsets being fostered or to the student’s stated learning goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TIPS FOR TEACHING MINDSETS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Influencing how students view themselves as learners is challenging work. Students often won’t respond if a teacher just tells them how they should think -- that creates defensiveness. Instead, a good tactic is to teach them some of the neuroscience around learning, including that the brain is malleable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You're telling students that when you work on really challenging things that’s when your brain is growing the most,” said Carissa Romero, assistant director of \u003ca href=\"http://www.perts.net/home/about.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stanford’s PERTS center\u003c/a>, which studies academic motivation. Giving them a reason to care about their approach to learning helps them connect it to their own lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Adults in the building have to be very clear that you can’t have a focus on academic mindsets if all you’re going to be focused on is grades.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Another tactic is to ask students if they exhibited one of the academic mindsets in another area of their lives and help them see how it could apply to learning. When a student exhibits that mindset in school, it can then be identified and connected to the rest of their lives. It’s important in these conversations to honor who students are as people and where they come from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in environments where test results dominate the conversation, teachers have control over the language they use. “Even if you're forced to give lots of assessments, the way that you talk about your assessments can promote a growth mindset,” Romero said. “Tell [students] this will help you know where you are, and we can use this together to get you to where you want to be, and help you reach your learning goals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THE TEACHER IS CENTRAL\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the best way to cultivate these academic mindsets is through the type of culture where every adult in the school is on the same page about what we're trying to do and how we're going about it,” said Ed Briceno, CEO of \u003ca href=\"http://www.mindsetworks.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MindSet Works\u003c/a>, a company offering professional development and curriculum based on Carol Dweck’s research. “And then everything we do on a daily basis fosters those positive academic mindsets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating that kind of culture starts by being honest with students about the kinds of goals educators are working towards and the challenges they faced along the way. “My kids know that I got kicked out of the Peace Corps and that I recovered from getting kicked out the Peace Corps,” said Mahoney. They also know his goal is to better support middle school math. He’s invited students to check in with him about that goal, and they do. By being transparent with students, Mahoney is modeling the kind of approach that he’d like to see students take.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It starts with the conversation you direct in schools and it starts with the examples you set for kids,” Mahoney said. “The kids are watching and they’re making note of that. And it’s important to make this fun. Making it feel like a game for kids is just another way of making it not so bad to fail.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Growth, community, a sense of personal agency, and creating meaningful work are not always the primary goals in many U.S. schools. Too often the conversation is focused on test scores, standards and pacing guides. Educators and researchers working to develop academic mindsets emphasized the importance of school culture to make kids believe in the concepts. “Adults in the building have to be very clear that you can’t have a focus on academic mindsets if all you’re going to be focused on is grades,” said Mahoney.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fostering academic mindsets is a two-way street and requires teachers to listen to students. “If we’re thinking about what’s required of us as teachers to foster academic mindsets in classrooms -- and thereby foster student development and growth -- it’s a mindset in and of itself,” said Rob Riordan, co-founder of \u003ca href=\"http://www.hightechhigh.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">High Tech High\u003c/a> and President of its Graduate School of Education. “It wants to know what students are thinking and how they’re thinking.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindsets has dominated much of the attention around how students can influence their own learning. But there are other ways to help students tap into their own motivation, too. Here are a few other important mindsets to consider.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34741\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34741\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903.jpg\" alt=\"3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/3113816327_9a3e7bdaff_z-e1395356922903-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\" credit=\"Flickr: fhwrdh\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap\" style=\"text-align: left\">Stanford psychologist \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/11/can-everyone-be-smart-at-everything/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindsets\u003c/a> has dominated much of the attention around how students can influence their own learning. But there are other ways to help students tap into their own motivation, too. Here are a few other important mindsets to consider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Belonging to an academic community:\u003c/strong> Feeling connected to adults and peers at school intellectually, not just socially, through an academic community, is a strong motivator. Feeling a sense of belonging in an intellectual community helps students interpret setbacks as a natural part of learning, and not as a personal deficit that sets them apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Belief in the likelihood of success:\u003c/strong> Students’ belief in their own self-efficacy is a better predictor of academic success than measured ability. Students need to feel that they're likely to succeed in order to sustain the hard work of learning something challenging. When students believe they'll fail, they often don’t invest in the work or devalue the task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The work has meaning and value:\u003c/strong> The brain naturally looks for connections. When students find academic work to be relevant to lives, interests, and concerns they're much more likely to work on a task in a sustained way and to perform well. It takes much more energy to focus attention on a task that does not have direct value to the student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Belief that abilities and intelligence can grow with effort:\u003c/strong> Known as a growth mindset, (Carol Dweck's theory we refer to above) if students believe the brain is a muscle that must be exercised, they're more likely to interpret setbacks as opportunities to learn and improve. This mindset is associated with the joy of mastering a task, rather than learning for a grade or to outperform others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FOSTERING ACADEMIC MINDSETS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools can encourage students to develop these mindsets, but it requires an intentional focus. “One thing we like to do as a school is celebrate kids taking risks and failing and then learning from those failures,” said Stephen Mahoney, principal of \u003ca href=\"http://www.springfieldrenaissanceschool.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Springfield Renaissance School\u003c/a> on a \u003ca href=\"http://dlmooc.deeper-learning.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Deeper Learning MOOC panel\u003c/a>. The majority of Renaissance students receive free and reduced price lunch and 80 percent are students of color. Even the school’s honor roll is based on effort and perseverance rather than on objective performance. Setting school values in this way sends a strong message to students about what educators see as the most valuable skills school can teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To help students see learning as a process, their assessments need to reflect the same ethos, including lots of informal feedback so students can improve on their work. “If they did something not very well, and they only get one chance to show what they know, that’s not a very good way to foster a growth mindset,” said \u003ca href=\"https://uei.uchicago.edu/about/staff/camille-farrington\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Camille Farrington\u003c/a>, research associate at University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research and author of 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\">white paper \u003c/a>on academic mindsets for the Hewlett Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To avoid that trap, schools can structure failure into the school culture, as Springfield Renaissance has done, so students don’t see a misstep as the end of their ability to succeed. “When students start reading the tea leaves and realize it’s impossible for them to succeed, they give up,” Farrington said. In points-based grading systems, students know when they’ve reached a point at which they can no longer pass, and stop trying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Students always have mindsets and they're always in the process of affirming the mindsets they already have,” Farrington said. “If they believe that they don’t belong or they can’t really do it then they’ll be looking for confirmation that that’s true.” It’s the teacher’s job to interrupt that negative mindset and turn it around to something positive and adaptive. Researchers have seen the impact of small, experimental interventions on a limited scale, so teachers who see kids every day can have a much bigger effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make assessment feel worthwhile to students, and progressive in nature, educators can allow students to show their learning in multiple ways and at multiple stages in the learning process. Allowing students to assess themselves as part of the process creates a thoughtful, recurring time for them to look at their own growth and set new goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It also helps to give very specific feedback using behavior language. There’s a big difference between, “good job, you got the right answer,” and feedback that points out specific qualities in the work that were well done and how that connects to one of the academic mindsets being fostered or to the student’s stated learning goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TIPS FOR TEACHING MINDSETS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Influencing how students view themselves as learners is challenging work. Students often won’t respond if a teacher just tells them how they should think -- that creates defensiveness. Instead, a good tactic is to teach them some of the neuroscience around learning, including that the brain is malleable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You're telling students that when you work on really challenging things that’s when your brain is growing the most,” said Carissa Romero, assistant director of \u003ca href=\"http://www.perts.net/home/about.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stanford’s PERTS center\u003c/a>, which studies academic motivation. Giving them a reason to care about their approach to learning helps them connect it to their own lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Adults in the building have to be very clear that you can’t have a focus on academic mindsets if all you’re going to be focused on is grades.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Another tactic is to ask students if they exhibited one of the academic mindsets in another area of their lives and help them see how it could apply to learning. When a student exhibits that mindset in school, it can then be identified and connected to the rest of their lives. It’s important in these conversations to honor who students are as people and where they come from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in environments where test results dominate the conversation, teachers have control over the language they use. “Even if you're forced to give lots of assessments, the way that you talk about your assessments can promote a growth mindset,” Romero said. “Tell [students] this will help you know where you are, and we can use this together to get you to where you want to be, and help you reach your learning goals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THE TEACHER IS CENTRAL\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the best way to cultivate these academic mindsets is through the type of culture where every adult in the school is on the same page about what we're trying to do and how we're going about it,” said Ed Briceno, CEO of \u003ca href=\"http://www.mindsetworks.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MindSet Works\u003c/a>, a company offering professional development and curriculum based on Carol Dweck’s research. “And then everything we do on a daily basis fosters those positive academic mindsets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating that kind of culture starts by being honest with students about the kinds of goals educators are working towards and the challenges they faced along the way. “My kids know that I got kicked out of the Peace Corps and that I recovered from getting kicked out the Peace Corps,” said Mahoney. They also know his goal is to better support middle school math. He’s invited students to check in with him about that goal, and they do. By being transparent with students, Mahoney is modeling the kind of approach that he’d like to see students take.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It starts with the conversation you direct in schools and it starts with the examples you set for kids,” Mahoney said. “The kids are watching and they’re making note of that. And it’s important to make this fun. Making it feel like a game for kids is just another way of making it not so bad to fail.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Growth, community, a sense of personal agency, and creating meaningful work are not always the primary goals in many U.S. schools. Too often the conversation is focused on test scores, standards and pacing guides. Educators and researchers working to develop academic mindsets emphasized the importance of school culture to make kids believe in the concepts. “Adults in the building have to be very clear that you can’t have a focus on academic mindsets if all you’re going to be focused on is grades,” said Mahoney.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "How to Reinvent Project Based Learning to Be More Meaningful",
"title": "How to Reinvent Project Based Learning to Be More Meaningful",
"headTitle": "PROJECT BASED LEARNING | MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34630\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 638px\">\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/michale/2857917490/sizes/z/\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34630\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176.jpg\" alt=\"2857917490_ec823748d8_z\" width=\"638\" height=\"430\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176.jpg 638w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176-400x270.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176-320x216.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Thom Markham\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">This is a crucial time for education. Every system in every country is in the process of figuring out how to reboot education to teach skills, application, and attitude in addition to recall and understanding. Helping students be able to grapple with increased problem solving and inquiry, be better critical and creative thinkers, show greater independence and engagement, and exhibit skills as presenters and collaborators is the challenge of the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's why so many educators are using the project based learning (PBL) model. PBL has proven to be a means for setting up the kind of problem-solving challenges that engage students in deeper learning and critical inquiry. It requires students to research, collaborate, decide on the value of information and evidence, accept feedback, design solutions, and present findings in a public space—all factors that create the conditions under which high performance and mastery are most likely to emerge. The rise of PBL, in fact, is a success story for education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, it’s also time to reboot PBL. It continues to be misinterpreted as a single teaching strategy rather than as a set of design principles that allow us to introduce the philosophy of inquiry into education in an intelligent and grounded way. It’s plagued by misunderstandings about when it \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\" target=\"_blank\">should be used, and when not\u003c/a>, and to what extent it can fulfill the mandate of a standards-based system. Too often, it ends with enthusiastic students delivering mediocre work — and teachers aren’t sure what went wrong or right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If PBL is to become a powerful, accepted model of instruction in the future, a vocabulary change may be in order -- preferably to the term \u003cem>project based inquiry\u003c/em>. It’s time to not only address the flaws in PBL, but to reinvent it in a way that leads to deeper learning, creative inquiry, and a better fit with a collaborative world in which doing and knowing are one thing. Here are thoughts about five areas in which PBL needs to move forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>1. Put PBL on a continuum of inquiry.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Infusing inquiry into the curriculum is the goal, so that instruction starts with questions rather than broadcasting content. But PBL is only one way to do that. Good teachers use many methods to help students observe, pose questions, engage in experimentation and error, and learn to analyze and reason. So it’s not necessary to use PBL 24/7 across all subjects. Instead:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>First, think skills.\u003c/strong> A coherent approach to inquiry begins with knowing that skills, not content, underlie the inquiry process. To link PBL with other parts of the school, have all teachers to sign onto the two chief skills required in PBL, teamwork and presentation. Use school-wide rubrics to assess the skills. Think of projects as the time when students really practice those skills at a high level for public consumption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Think strategically.\u003c/strong> Plan for PBL over the course of the year, but don’t expect every teacher to do a project. For instance, step back and analyze an entire ninth-grade class. How many projects will they experience in the course of the year? Who will conduct the projects? If students participate in three or four projects every year, they will get what they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Use PBL for entrepreneurial inquiry.\u003c/strong> When teachers want students to go deep into an important topic, grapple with a community issue, or experience the persistence and intellectual rigor necessary to dig in to something meaningful, that’s the perfect time for PBL. Otherwise, normal inquiry gets the job done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Differentiate subjects.\u003c/strong> Not all subjects fit PBL in the same way. Courses such as AP Calculus and Physics may use a shorter, more contained problem-based approach, or a more activity-based approach. Humanities projects may take on community issues. Both approaches are valid and use similar design principles, but have different objectives.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>2. Blend surface knowledge and deeper learning.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>It is impossible at this historical juncture to figure out how much students need to put into hard-wired long term memory versus how much information they simply download, pass through, and apply. Google is ruining the curriculum, no doubt about it. On the other hand, you have to know in order to think. But in the zeal to expand the constructivist side of PBL, we’re losing the knowing—the kind of facts, terms, and vocabulary of the discipline that allow a student to express knowledge coherently. This is not a matter of test preparation as much as a design issue to make sure students have a sufficient knowledge base. Some solutions:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"972d38da16bb1880fe85920c8dfe3242\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Let go of theory.\u003c/strong> In theory, a question or challenge posed in PBL is so compelling that students will learn all essential facts necessary to answer the question. In practice, this doesn’t work. Teachers must make an intentional effort to design surface knowledge into a project. This is not so easy, because PBL focuses on authentic questions that lead to open ended problem solving. Content can get lost, and often does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Analyze the project.\u003c/strong> Start a project design with a creative challenge and end with an authentic product, but carefully analyze the design to make sure essential facts and concepts will be taught. If students require certain facts and concepts for tests, but those facts don’t fit into the design, take a breath and just teach them. The project won’t fail because you took one day to ‘cover’ material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Use direct instruction.\u003c/strong> Direct instruction is not the same as boring lectures—and it’s time to distinguish them. Direct instruction works quite well when dosed with questioning and small group discussions. Use it to transmit essential information efficiently and quickly during the course of a project.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>3. Start with a sophisticated student-centered culture.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The greatest number of failures in PBL occurs in schools that attempt to graft PBL onto a traditional, row-centered, front of the room classroom culture. A teacher-centered system and a student-centered system are different life forms. One is focused on content delivery and a \"hand it in, hand it back\" approach; the other requires openness, coaching, and an \"errors are fine\" philosophy. Unless a teacher uses the tools of a positive culture and high performance, students don’t engage at the level necessary to persist, investigate, and hold themselves accountable for mastery. Creating this culture requires more than liking your students. Instead, it is necessary for educators to intentionally teach students to perform skillfully and learn to coach those skills at a high level. Some steps:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reflect.\u003c/strong> Your personality and attitude, particularly listening skills and openness, will directly affect the quality of the project. System wide, remember that PBL is personality driven. If certain teachers don’t embrace PBL, but do a good job of stimulating inquiry, let them be. Everyone will be happier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Build student capacity.\u003c/strong> Prior to projects, take time for students to reflect on their skills and attitudes, practice team building, setting norms, and examining responsibilities and aspirations. For PBL to succeed, the entire pace of instruction must be slowed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Know the neuroscience.\u003c/strong> Every study shows the same results: Your attitude, beliefs, and hidden expectations are communicated to students—and change their brain. Take care with messaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>4. Make collaboration as powerful in school as it is in life.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Group work and cooperative learning are giving PBL a hangover. It is time to make a fundamental shift in the direction of teamwork. In a relationship-driven world, the era of the individual scholar is coming to an end. PBL is a perfect method for helping reveal how peers will work together in the future to create and analyze content. Teachers can speed this process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make collaboration the foundational skill.\u003c/strong> Instead of seeing 21st-century skills as a laundry list, prioritize by making teamwork the basis for academic work, particularly in projects. Move from the loose language of \"groups\" to the more accountable language of teams and cohorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make teams purposeful.\u003c/strong> Bring \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/how-to-foster-collaboration-and-team-spirit/\" target=\"_blank\">teams together for the purpose of creating better products\u003c/a>, not just discussing and brainstorming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Require teams to participate deeply in the design process.\u003c/strong> Have them regularly and frequently exchange design ideas, test prototypes, follow protocols, use the vocabulary of the discipline, and exhibit mature responses to feedback from peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make peer review the norm.\u003c/strong> Don’t look at any student work until it has gone through a peer review process that pushes students to present their best work for your evaluation and feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>5. Understand that PBL cannot be done alone.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>PBL is a complex form of teaching, with many moving parts and a creative element. Teachers will benefit enormously, and grow their expertise much faster, if they can discuss and refine their projects together. The opposite is true, also; if schools continue to limit collaborative time to Monday mornings between 8 am and 9 am, or something similar, PBL will fail. Inquiry simply demands more depth and conversation than the traditional system allows. Many changes are required here, but the step with the greatest leverage? Try this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Institutionalize Critical Friends Protocols.\u003c/strong> A 25 minute protocol, in which teachers present ideas to peers and receive feedback about a project in a respectful, professional environment, is a game changer. It sets a higher bar for discourse, encourages teachers to think more deeply, and takes education away from its familiar staples of \"neat\" ideas and endless inputs. The protocols work well in department meetings, staff meetings, or at PD days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-admin/thom@thommarkham.com\">Thom Markham\u003c/a> is a psychologist, school redesign consultant, and the author of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Project-Based-Learning-Design-Coaching/dp/1616233613/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334257826&sr=1-3\">Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators\u003c/a>. Find many more resources on his website, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thommarkham.com/\">www.thommarkham.com\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34630\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 638px\">\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/michale/2857917490/sizes/z/\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34630\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176.jpg\" alt=\"2857917490_ec823748d8_z\" width=\"638\" height=\"430\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176.jpg 638w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176-400x270.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176-320x216.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Thom Markham\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">This is a crucial time for education. Every system in every country is in the process of figuring out how to reboot education to teach skills, application, and attitude in addition to recall and understanding. Helping students be able to grapple with increased problem solving and inquiry, be better critical and creative thinkers, show greater independence and engagement, and exhibit skills as presenters and collaborators is the challenge of the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's why so many educators are using the project based learning (PBL) model. PBL has proven to be a means for setting up the kind of problem-solving challenges that engage students in deeper learning and critical inquiry. It requires students to research, collaborate, decide on the value of information and evidence, accept feedback, design solutions, and present findings in a public space—all factors that create the conditions under which high performance and mastery are most likely to emerge. The rise of PBL, in fact, is a success story for education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, it’s also time to reboot PBL. It continues to be misinterpreted as a single teaching strategy rather than as a set of design principles that allow us to introduce the philosophy of inquiry into education in an intelligent and grounded way. It’s plagued by misunderstandings about when it \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\" target=\"_blank\">should be used, and when not\u003c/a>, and to what extent it can fulfill the mandate of a standards-based system. Too often, it ends with enthusiastic students delivering mediocre work — and teachers aren’t sure what went wrong or right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If PBL is to become a powerful, accepted model of instruction in the future, a vocabulary change may be in order -- preferably to the term \u003cem>project based inquiry\u003c/em>. It’s time to not only address the flaws in PBL, but to reinvent it in a way that leads to deeper learning, creative inquiry, and a better fit with a collaborative world in which doing and knowing are one thing. Here are thoughts about five areas in which PBL needs to move forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>1. Put PBL on a continuum of inquiry.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Infusing inquiry into the curriculum is the goal, so that instruction starts with questions rather than broadcasting content. But PBL is only one way to do that. Good teachers use many methods to help students observe, pose questions, engage in experimentation and error, and learn to analyze and reason. So it’s not necessary to use PBL 24/7 across all subjects. Instead:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>First, think skills.\u003c/strong> A coherent approach to inquiry begins with knowing that skills, not content, underlie the inquiry process. To link PBL with other parts of the school, have all teachers to sign onto the two chief skills required in PBL, teamwork and presentation. Use school-wide rubrics to assess the skills. Think of projects as the time when students really practice those skills at a high level for public consumption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Think strategically.\u003c/strong> Plan for PBL over the course of the year, but don’t expect every teacher to do a project. For instance, step back and analyze an entire ninth-grade class. How many projects will they experience in the course of the year? Who will conduct the projects? If students participate in three or four projects every year, they will get what they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Use PBL for entrepreneurial inquiry.\u003c/strong> When teachers want students to go deep into an important topic, grapple with a community issue, or experience the persistence and intellectual rigor necessary to dig in to something meaningful, that’s the perfect time for PBL. Otherwise, normal inquiry gets the job done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Differentiate subjects.\u003c/strong> Not all subjects fit PBL in the same way. Courses such as AP Calculus and Physics may use a shorter, more contained problem-based approach, or a more activity-based approach. Humanities projects may take on community issues. Both approaches are valid and use similar design principles, but have different objectives.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>2. Blend surface knowledge and deeper learning.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>It is impossible at this historical juncture to figure out how much students need to put into hard-wired long term memory versus how much information they simply download, pass through, and apply. Google is ruining the curriculum, no doubt about it. On the other hand, you have to know in order to think. But in the zeal to expand the constructivist side of PBL, we’re losing the knowing—the kind of facts, terms, and vocabulary of the discipline that allow a student to express knowledge coherently. This is not a matter of test preparation as much as a design issue to make sure students have a sufficient knowledge base. Some solutions:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Let go of theory.\u003c/strong> In theory, a question or challenge posed in PBL is so compelling that students will learn all essential facts necessary to answer the question. In practice, this doesn’t work. Teachers must make an intentional effort to design surface knowledge into a project. This is not so easy, because PBL focuses on authentic questions that lead to open ended problem solving. Content can get lost, and often does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Analyze the project.\u003c/strong> Start a project design with a creative challenge and end with an authentic product, but carefully analyze the design to make sure essential facts and concepts will be taught. If students require certain facts and concepts for tests, but those facts don’t fit into the design, take a breath and just teach them. The project won’t fail because you took one day to ‘cover’ material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Use direct instruction.\u003c/strong> Direct instruction is not the same as boring lectures—and it’s time to distinguish them. Direct instruction works quite well when dosed with questioning and small group discussions. Use it to transmit essential information efficiently and quickly during the course of a project.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>3. Start with a sophisticated student-centered culture.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The greatest number of failures in PBL occurs in schools that attempt to graft PBL onto a traditional, row-centered, front of the room classroom culture. A teacher-centered system and a student-centered system are different life forms. One is focused on content delivery and a \"hand it in, hand it back\" approach; the other requires openness, coaching, and an \"errors are fine\" philosophy. Unless a teacher uses the tools of a positive culture and high performance, students don’t engage at the level necessary to persist, investigate, and hold themselves accountable for mastery. Creating this culture requires more than liking your students. Instead, it is necessary for educators to intentionally teach students to perform skillfully and learn to coach those skills at a high level. Some steps:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reflect.\u003c/strong> Your personality and attitude, particularly listening skills and openness, will directly affect the quality of the project. System wide, remember that PBL is personality driven. If certain teachers don’t embrace PBL, but do a good job of stimulating inquiry, let them be. Everyone will be happier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Build student capacity.\u003c/strong> Prior to projects, take time for students to reflect on their skills and attitudes, practice team building, setting norms, and examining responsibilities and aspirations. For PBL to succeed, the entire pace of instruction must be slowed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Know the neuroscience.\u003c/strong> Every study shows the same results: Your attitude, beliefs, and hidden expectations are communicated to students—and change their brain. Take care with messaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>4. Make collaboration as powerful in school as it is in life.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Group work and cooperative learning are giving PBL a hangover. It is time to make a fundamental shift in the direction of teamwork. In a relationship-driven world, the era of the individual scholar is coming to an end. PBL is a perfect method for helping reveal how peers will work together in the future to create and analyze content. Teachers can speed this process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make collaboration the foundational skill.\u003c/strong> Instead of seeing 21st-century skills as a laundry list, prioritize by making teamwork the basis for academic work, particularly in projects. Move from the loose language of \"groups\" to the more accountable language of teams and cohorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make teams purposeful.\u003c/strong> Bring \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/how-to-foster-collaboration-and-team-spirit/\" target=\"_blank\">teams together for the purpose of creating better products\u003c/a>, not just discussing and brainstorming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Require teams to participate deeply in the design process.\u003c/strong> Have them regularly and frequently exchange design ideas, test prototypes, follow protocols, use the vocabulary of the discipline, and exhibit mature responses to feedback from peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make peer review the norm.\u003c/strong> Don’t look at any student work until it has gone through a peer review process that pushes students to present their best work for your evaluation and feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>5. Understand that PBL cannot be done alone.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>PBL is a complex form of teaching, with many moving parts and a creative element. Teachers will benefit enormously, and grow their expertise much faster, if they can discuss and refine their projects together. The opposite is true, also; if schools continue to limit collaborative time to Monday mornings between 8 am and 9 am, or something similar, PBL will fail. Inquiry simply demands more depth and conversation than the traditional system allows. Many changes are required here, but the step with the greatest leverage? Try this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Institutionalize Critical Friends Protocols.\u003c/strong> A 25 minute protocol, in which teachers present ideas to peers and receive feedback about a project in a respectful, professional environment, is a game changer. It sets a higher bar for discourse, encourages teachers to think more deeply, and takes education away from its familiar staples of \"neat\" ideas and endless inputs. The protocols work well in department meetings, staff meetings, or at PD days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Pushing students to go beyond what they think they can do is at the core of good teaching. This Teaching Channel video follows students and educators at \u003ca href=\"http://www.sps.springfield.ma.us/\" target=\"_blank\">Springfield Renaissance School\u003c/a>, part of the \u003ca href=\"http://elschools.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Expeditionary Learning\u003c/a> network. Students at the school understand that struggling with a particular task is part of learning. Teachers have high expectations of students, expect a positive classroom culture and are willing to gently prod students to dig deeper and reveal more. Teachers embed Common Core standards like the ability to use textual evidence to back up arguments, into the culture of class. They also understand that the love of learning takes ownership and self-awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dig into other \u003ca href=\"https://www.teachingchannel.org/deeper-learning-video-series\" target=\"_blank\">Teaching Channel videos on Deeper Learning\u003c/a> showing classroom examples, student perspectives and more on what engaged, meaningful learning looks like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/deeper-learning-challenges-students-exl#\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_32567\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-32567\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/doing-homework360.jpg\" alt=\"doing-homework360\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/doing-homework360.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/doing-homework360-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/doing-homework360-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">In an NPR \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/can-focus-on-grit-work-in-school-cultures-that-reward-grades/\" target=\"_blank\">story\u003c/a> earlier this week, Tovia Smith reported on the growing number of schools that are trying to instill “grit”— perseverance in the face of adversity — in their students. Smith focused on one such school:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Tom Hoerr leads the New City School, a private elementary school in St. Louis, Mo., that has been working on grit. ‘One of the sayings that you hear around here a great deal is, “If our kids have graduated from here with nothing but success, then we have failed them, because they haven’t learned how to respond to frustration and failure,”‘ says Hoerr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of focusing on the theory known as 'multiple intelligences' and trying to teach kids in their own style, Hoerr says he’s now pulling kids out of their comfort zones intentionally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>‘The message is that life isn’t always easy,’ Hoerr says. His goal is to make sure ‘that no matter how talented [students are], they hit the wall, so they can learn to pick themselves up, hit the wall again and pick themselves up again, and ultimately persevere and succeed.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is a major adjustment for everyone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of the adjustment involved seems to be the whiplash associated with following one set of educational trends (“multiple intelligences” and “learning styles”), then shifting gears to follow another set (“grit” and the “growth mindset”).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grit, an idea developed by Penn professor Angela Duckworth, and the growth mindset, a concept researched by Stanford professor Carol Dweck, have more empirical support than the appealing-sounding but unproven theories of multiple intelligences and learning styles. (For more about the learning styles theory, click \u003ca href=\"http://anniemurphypaul.com/2013/10/forget-about-learning-styles-heres-something-better/\">here\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\"> \"Once the learner has attained some degree of mastery, ratcheting up the difficulty will help her stay in her 'sweet spot' of engagement, where the task is not too hard as to be frustrating and not so easy as to be boring.\" \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But even putting the question of educational trends aside, the experience of principal Tom Hoerr as documented in the NPR segment brings up a question that parents and teachers wrestle with all the time: Should we be making learning easier for kids—or harder?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer, according to research in cognitive science and psychology, is \u003cem>both\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, let’s think about how and why we might make learning easier. This has to do with what psychologists call “cognitive load”— the amount of information we have to keep in mind as we solve a problem. Decades of research has shown that this capacity is quite limited.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvard psychologist George Miller famously said that we could keep seven pieces of information in our minds at a time (he called it “the magic number seven”), but he was looking at studies that used numbers or letters or simple symbols. When the pieces of information are more complex, like concepts or facts, the number of them that we can keep in mind goes down, to about four. And if we are actively manipulating or combining those pieces of information, as we do in most kinds of real-life problem-solving, the number of things our minds can hang on to drops even further, to maybe two or three.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that many tasks we ask students to do impose too great a cognitive load. They lose track of what they’re doing, they make mistakes, they get lost and give up. Even if they hang on long enough to solve the problem, they don’t have enough mental capacity left over to reflect on what they’ve done — and reflection is where learning really happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"26ed3a2f0dde0acdbf016792e68e1a24\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So: the way in which we should make learning easier is to reduce cognitive load, especially when we are introducing new or complicated materials. (Parents and teachers, who are already experts at this stuff, often don’t realize how much cognitive load they’re imposing on kids and other novices.) Slow it down. Break complicated ideas into smaller pieces, taking them one at a time. Offer lots of opportunities for practice with feedback. Avoid using jargon and other technical terms. Eliminate extraneous or distracting information and focus only on what the learner needs to know at this moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MAKING IT HARDER\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Makes sense. But what about making learning harder? Is there ever a reason to do that? Yes, and the reason is twofold. The first reason to make learning harder is to make it interesting. Learning something new and complicated is hard in itself, as we saw above. Lightening the learner’s cognitive load will allow her to learn more effectively without becoming frustrated or confused.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But once the learner has attained some degree of mastery, ratcheting up the difficulty will help her stay in her “sweet spot” of engagement, where the task is not too hard as to be frustrating and not so easy as to be boring. This is also the place where learners can practice encountering adversity and challenge and overcoming them, a key experience in the development of grit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second reason to make learning harder is that it makes learning work better. UCLA psychologist Robert Bjork has developed the idea of “desirable difficulties”—difficulties that we actually \u003cem>want\u003c/em> to introduce into students’ learning to make it more effective. Bjork notes that many of the learning activities that make students feel competent and successful—like reading over a textbook passage several times so that it feels familiar—actually do very little to help them learn. What they should do instead is something like this: close that textbook and ask themselves to recall from memory what they’ve just read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It won’t feel as good. They’ll struggle to remember the words that were just in front of their eyes. But this activity, known as retrieval practice (or simply self-testing) is an example of a desirable difficulty that will dramatically increase students’ learning. You can read more about desirable difficulties \u003ca href=\"http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2006/march-06/the-science-of-learning-and-the-learning-of-science.html\">here\u003c/a>, in an article by Bjork himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike learning styles, cognitive load theory and the theory of desirable difficulties have lots of research support. You won’t have to worry that another fad will come along to displace them in a few years. And in the meantime, you’ll have a good answer to the question of whether we should be making learning easier or harder. Remember: it’s both.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Parents and teachers wrestle with all the time: Should we be making learning easier for kids—or harder? The answer, according to research in cognitive science and psychology, is both.\r\n\r\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_32567\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-32567\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/doing-homework360.jpg\" alt=\"doing-homework360\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/doing-homework360.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/doing-homework360-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/doing-homework360-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">In an NPR \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/can-focus-on-grit-work-in-school-cultures-that-reward-grades/\" target=\"_blank\">story\u003c/a> earlier this week, Tovia Smith reported on the growing number of schools that are trying to instill “grit”— perseverance in the face of adversity — in their students. Smith focused on one such school:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Tom Hoerr leads the New City School, a private elementary school in St. Louis, Mo., that has been working on grit. ‘One of the sayings that you hear around here a great deal is, “If our kids have graduated from here with nothing but success, then we have failed them, because they haven’t learned how to respond to frustration and failure,”‘ says Hoerr.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of focusing on the theory known as 'multiple intelligences' and trying to teach kids in their own style, Hoerr says he’s now pulling kids out of their comfort zones intentionally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>‘The message is that life isn’t always easy,’ Hoerr says. His goal is to make sure ‘that no matter how talented [students are], they hit the wall, so they can learn to pick themselves up, hit the wall again and pick themselves up again, and ultimately persevere and succeed.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is a major adjustment for everyone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of the adjustment involved seems to be the whiplash associated with following one set of educational trends (“multiple intelligences” and “learning styles”), then shifting gears to follow another set (“grit” and the “growth mindset”).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grit, an idea developed by Penn professor Angela Duckworth, and the growth mindset, a concept researched by Stanford professor Carol Dweck, have more empirical support than the appealing-sounding but unproven theories of multiple intelligences and learning styles. (For more about the learning styles theory, click \u003ca href=\"http://anniemurphypaul.com/2013/10/forget-about-learning-styles-heres-something-better/\">here\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\"> \"Once the learner has attained some degree of mastery, ratcheting up the difficulty will help her stay in her 'sweet spot' of engagement, where the task is not too hard as to be frustrating and not so easy as to be boring.\" \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But even putting the question of educational trends aside, the experience of principal Tom Hoerr as documented in the NPR segment brings up a question that parents and teachers wrestle with all the time: Should we be making learning easier for kids—or harder?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer, according to research in cognitive science and psychology, is \u003cem>both\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, let’s think about how and why we might make learning easier. This has to do with what psychologists call “cognitive load”— the amount of information we have to keep in mind as we solve a problem. Decades of research has shown that this capacity is quite limited.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvard psychologist George Miller famously said that we could keep seven pieces of information in our minds at a time (he called it “the magic number seven”), but he was looking at studies that used numbers or letters or simple symbols. When the pieces of information are more complex, like concepts or facts, the number of them that we can keep in mind goes down, to about four. And if we are actively manipulating or combining those pieces of information, as we do in most kinds of real-life problem-solving, the number of things our minds can hang on to drops even further, to maybe two or three.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that many tasks we ask students to do impose too great a cognitive load. They lose track of what they’re doing, they make mistakes, they get lost and give up. Even if they hang on long enough to solve the problem, they don’t have enough mental capacity left over to reflect on what they’ve done — and reflection is where learning really happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So: the way in which we should make learning easier is to reduce cognitive load, especially when we are introducing new or complicated materials. (Parents and teachers, who are already experts at this stuff, often don’t realize how much cognitive load they’re imposing on kids and other novices.) Slow it down. Break complicated ideas into smaller pieces, taking them one at a time. Offer lots of opportunities for practice with feedback. Avoid using jargon and other technical terms. Eliminate extraneous or distracting information and focus only on what the learner needs to know at this moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MAKING IT HARDER\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Makes sense. But what about making learning harder? Is there ever a reason to do that? Yes, and the reason is twofold. The first reason to make learning harder is to make it interesting. Learning something new and complicated is hard in itself, as we saw above. Lightening the learner’s cognitive load will allow her to learn more effectively without becoming frustrated or confused.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But once the learner has attained some degree of mastery, ratcheting up the difficulty will help her stay in her “sweet spot” of engagement, where the task is not too hard as to be frustrating and not so easy as to be boring. This is also the place where learners can practice encountering adversity and challenge and overcoming them, a key experience in the development of grit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second reason to make learning harder is that it makes learning work better. UCLA psychologist Robert Bjork has developed the idea of “desirable difficulties”—difficulties that we actually \u003cem>want\u003c/em> to introduce into students’ learning to make it more effective. Bjork notes that many of the learning activities that make students feel competent and successful—like reading over a textbook passage several times so that it feels familiar—actually do very little to help them learn. What they should do instead is something like this: close that textbook and ask themselves to recall from memory what they’ve just read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It won’t feel as good. They’ll struggle to remember the words that were just in front of their eyes. But this activity, known as retrieval practice (or simply self-testing) is an example of a desirable difficulty that will dramatically increase students’ learning. You can read more about desirable difficulties \u003ca href=\"http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2006/march-06/the-science-of-learning-and-the-learning-of-science.html\">here\u003c/a>, in an article by Bjork himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike learning styles, cognitive load theory and the theory of desirable difficulties have lots of research support. You won’t have to worry that another fad will come along to displace them in a few years. And in the meantime, you’ll have a good answer to the question of whether we should be making learning easier or harder. Remember: it’s both.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34605\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/dfataustralianaid/10726320313/sizes/z/\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34605\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/10726320313_d78289b5f0_z-e1395244309451.jpg\" alt=\"10726320313_d78289b5f0_z\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/10726320313_d78289b5f0_z-e1395244309451.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/10726320313_d78289b5f0_z-e1395244309451-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/10726320313_d78289b5f0_z-e1395244309451-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Helping every student experience meaningful, deep learning is a constant challenge, in no small part because no two learners are alike. To reach students who are particularly challenged -- whether because of their ability to speak English or some other reason -- educators can find a way in by tapping into students' interests and passion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t have to know how to read and write to think deeply,” said Claire Sylvan, founding executive director of \u003ca href=\"http://internationalsnps.org/\" target=\"_blank\">The Internationals Network For Public Schools\u003c/a>, schools that serve high school students who have been in the country fewer than four years. Sylvan spoke on a \u003ca href=\"http://dlmooc.deeper-learning.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Deeper Learning MOOC \u003c/a>panel focused on strategies for helping even the most challenged learners to engage in meaningful work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every student at an Internationals school is an English Language Learner, but not all have a common mother tongue. Internationals schools give students projects that involve complex thinking in both English and native languages. “Provide them with on-ramps that allow them to develop literacy in the environment that they now inhabit,” Sylvan said. There’s often a myth that students need to learn English before they can participate in more interesting work, but the Internationals Network has built an entire model on engaging students in learning through work that interests them, giving them a compelling reason to learn English.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\n\u003cp>“The key thing about deeper learning for the kids we work with is not whether they can do it, but how can we structure classrooms so they can be successful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“The one context that’s not particularly useful is trying to teach language by itself as isolated words,” Sylvan said. “Mothers don’t put babies in a row and ask them to repeat. Language is learned by using it to describe things that you are experiencing; so if kids are engaged in a project they have a real reason to learn a language,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engagement is important for all learners, but especially for those who have extra barriers to success. Connecting learning to the real world can be an easy way to increase classroom engagement because many of the most disaffected learners have a lot of real-life experience they can draw upon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those kids are often really talented in the real world,” said Ron Berger, chief academic officer for \u003ca href=\"http://elschools.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Expeditionary Learning\u003c/a>, a network of schools that has pioneered the deeper learning movement. “In real life they thrive in many ways, so the more ways that we can make academic work connect to the real world, we let those kids thrive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To that end, educators have to move past the idea that learning is a linear process. “It’s crazy to separate basic skills from engaging complex work,” Berger said. Instead, the basic skills should be in service of something exciting to students because few students show their capacity through textbook work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An example of a project that meets every learner at their skill level was done in a fourth grade Spanish class in which there were students who had never studied Spanish before alongside native speakers. The teacher partnered with a school in Guatemala online that also had Spanish language learners because its students mostly spoke indigenous languages like Mayan. The two classrooms wrote books for one another. Some books had complicated story lines and others were simpler, but the project gave each student the chance to contribute something meaningful. “They all created something beautiful and of quality,” Berger said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CREATING STRUCTURES FOR SUCCESS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reaching all learners successfully is a tough job and requires carefully thought-out structures. “There's a misperception that deeper learning is unstructured,” Berger said. “It’s really just a question about what you’re going to be tight and loose about. In traditional classrooms they are tight about pacing and about kids being quiet. I’d rather be tight about kids being focused and courteous.” Changing the focus might make for a more chaotic classroom, but meaningful learning is often happening between students in that environment. “It’s an active peer-driven sense of working towards quality,” Berger said. “It’s not just sitting passively and letting someone tell you what to think.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Careful grouping is important to give all learners the best chance at success. “The key thing about deeper learning for the kids we work with is not whether they can do it, but how can we structure classrooms so they can be successful,” said Joe Luft, senior director of programs for the Internationals Network and a former teacher and principal at one of their schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"e34bf526916a71e3a97c2e9322a32011\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You want to be able to support students academically and in terms of literacy,” said Rosemary Milczewski, a math teacher at \u003ca href=\"http://www.flushinginternational.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Flushing International High School\u003c/a>. “They are arguing; they are talking to each other; and I’m walking around as a facilitator.” A common way to teach students for whom English isn’t their first language is to group them by proficiency. But Sylvan says that rarely works. Grouping is a delicate balance of English language ability, native language ability, and familiarity with the academic content. “The grouping would differ based on the task you are asking students to do,” Sylvan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TEACHER GROUPING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to carefully grouping students for project work, it can be very helpful to group teaching staff to best serve the needs of students. At Internationals High Schools, five teachers all work with the same group of students. They coordinate closely on the literacy goals that cross all classes in addition to developing interesting projects together. For example, all teachers may be working on helping students use language to compare and contrast or to use cause and effect language, no matter what subject they teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating class structures that support student-self esteem and promote an open culture also help reluctant or traditionally hard-to-reach students. “The first thing that comes to mind for me is changing students' perceptions of themselves so they don’t see themselves as unable to learn,” said Thabiti Brown, principal of Codman Academy, a Boston charter school in the process of growing to be a K-12 school. “If they are thinking about themselves as students who are exercising that muscle, the brain, then it changes their perception of themselves.” Students also need to feel permission to express themselves and to know that their input is valued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Milczewski immigrated to the U.S. when she was a teenager and attended an Internationals School. She uses her story to motivate her students and create a community of learners. “Telling them my story, I feel like it gives them some hope,” she said. “They realize they can graduate from high school, go to college and all they’ve got to do is work hard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SCHOOL STRUCTURES TO PROMOTE SUCCESS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers working with challenged students need extra time to plan, tutor, and work together. We need a lot of different time to meet in lots of different configurations around a lot of different issues,” said Ben Daley, chief academic officer at \u003ca href=\"http://www.hightechhigh.org/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High\u003c/a>. At Flushing Internationals School teachers meet for two hours each week to discuss instructional work and ways to support specific students. They plan the language function and outcomes they’ll be working on and talk logistics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, each week they meet to talk about social and emotional needs of students, and there’s always a morning meeting for team leaders to report back on the school-wide administrative issues. In addition to all of that, teachers are on committees to help make decisions about the schools. These school-wide structures help teachers feel supported and connected in their difficult work and keep the staff on the same page about learning goals, but they are often built into the school day, not an addition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This type of group work also mirrors the project-based learning teachers are asking of students. Adults are working on a complex problem together, collaborating with people different from themselves, and bringing their strengths to the table. “High school people think of themselves as subject people,” Sylvan said. “When you group them across subject you allow teachers to focus on students.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34605\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/dfataustralianaid/10726320313/sizes/z/\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34605\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/10726320313_d78289b5f0_z-e1395244309451.jpg\" alt=\"10726320313_d78289b5f0_z\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/10726320313_d78289b5f0_z-e1395244309451.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/10726320313_d78289b5f0_z-e1395244309451-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/10726320313_d78289b5f0_z-e1395244309451-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Helping every student experience meaningful, deep learning is a constant challenge, in no small part because no two learners are alike. To reach students who are particularly challenged -- whether because of their ability to speak English or some other reason -- educators can find a way in by tapping into students' interests and passion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t have to know how to read and write to think deeply,” said Claire Sylvan, founding executive director of \u003ca href=\"http://internationalsnps.org/\" target=\"_blank\">The Internationals Network For Public Schools\u003c/a>, schools that serve high school students who have been in the country fewer than four years. Sylvan spoke on a \u003ca href=\"http://dlmooc.deeper-learning.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Deeper Learning MOOC \u003c/a>panel focused on strategies for helping even the most challenged learners to engage in meaningful work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every student at an Internationals school is an English Language Learner, but not all have a common mother tongue. Internationals schools give students projects that involve complex thinking in both English and native languages. “Provide them with on-ramps that allow them to develop literacy in the environment that they now inhabit,” Sylvan said. There’s often a myth that students need to learn English before they can participate in more interesting work, but the Internationals Network has built an entire model on engaging students in learning through work that interests them, giving them a compelling reason to learn English.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\n\u003cp>“The key thing about deeper learning for the kids we work with is not whether they can do it, but how can we structure classrooms so they can be successful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“The one context that’s not particularly useful is trying to teach language by itself as isolated words,” Sylvan said. “Mothers don’t put babies in a row and ask them to repeat. Language is learned by using it to describe things that you are experiencing; so if kids are engaged in a project they have a real reason to learn a language,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engagement is important for all learners, but especially for those who have extra barriers to success. Connecting learning to the real world can be an easy way to increase classroom engagement because many of the most disaffected learners have a lot of real-life experience they can draw upon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those kids are often really talented in the real world,” said Ron Berger, chief academic officer for \u003ca href=\"http://elschools.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Expeditionary Learning\u003c/a>, a network of schools that has pioneered the deeper learning movement. “In real life they thrive in many ways, so the more ways that we can make academic work connect to the real world, we let those kids thrive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To that end, educators have to move past the idea that learning is a linear process. “It’s crazy to separate basic skills from engaging complex work,” Berger said. Instead, the basic skills should be in service of something exciting to students because few students show their capacity through textbook work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An example of a project that meets every learner at their skill level was done in a fourth grade Spanish class in which there were students who had never studied Spanish before alongside native speakers. The teacher partnered with a school in Guatemala online that also had Spanish language learners because its students mostly spoke indigenous languages like Mayan. The two classrooms wrote books for one another. Some books had complicated story lines and others were simpler, but the project gave each student the chance to contribute something meaningful. “They all created something beautiful and of quality,” Berger said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CREATING STRUCTURES FOR SUCCESS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reaching all learners successfully is a tough job and requires carefully thought-out structures. “There's a misperception that deeper learning is unstructured,” Berger said. “It’s really just a question about what you’re going to be tight and loose about. In traditional classrooms they are tight about pacing and about kids being quiet. I’d rather be tight about kids being focused and courteous.” Changing the focus might make for a more chaotic classroom, but meaningful learning is often happening between students in that environment. “It’s an active peer-driven sense of working towards quality,” Berger said. “It’s not just sitting passively and letting someone tell you what to think.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Careful grouping is important to give all learners the best chance at success. “The key thing about deeper learning for the kids we work with is not whether they can do it, but how can we structure classrooms so they can be successful,” said Joe Luft, senior director of programs for the Internationals Network and a former teacher and principal at one of their schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You want to be able to support students academically and in terms of literacy,” said Rosemary Milczewski, a math teacher at \u003ca href=\"http://www.flushinginternational.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Flushing International High School\u003c/a>. “They are arguing; they are talking to each other; and I’m walking around as a facilitator.” A common way to teach students for whom English isn’t their first language is to group them by proficiency. But Sylvan says that rarely works. Grouping is a delicate balance of English language ability, native language ability, and familiarity with the academic content. “The grouping would differ based on the task you are asking students to do,” Sylvan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TEACHER GROUPING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to carefully grouping students for project work, it can be very helpful to group teaching staff to best serve the needs of students. At Internationals High Schools, five teachers all work with the same group of students. They coordinate closely on the literacy goals that cross all classes in addition to developing interesting projects together. For example, all teachers may be working on helping students use language to compare and contrast or to use cause and effect language, no matter what subject they teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating class structures that support student-self esteem and promote an open culture also help reluctant or traditionally hard-to-reach students. “The first thing that comes to mind for me is changing students' perceptions of themselves so they don’t see themselves as unable to learn,” said Thabiti Brown, principal of Codman Academy, a Boston charter school in the process of growing to be a K-12 school. “If they are thinking about themselves as students who are exercising that muscle, the brain, then it changes their perception of themselves.” Students also need to feel permission to express themselves and to know that their input is valued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Milczewski immigrated to the U.S. when she was a teenager and attended an Internationals School. She uses her story to motivate her students and create a community of learners. “Telling them my story, I feel like it gives them some hope,” she said. “They realize they can graduate from high school, go to college and all they’ve got to do is work hard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SCHOOL STRUCTURES TO PROMOTE SUCCESS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers working with challenged students need extra time to plan, tutor, and work together. We need a lot of different time to meet in lots of different configurations around a lot of different issues,” said Ben Daley, chief academic officer at \u003ca href=\"http://www.hightechhigh.org/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High\u003c/a>. At Flushing Internationals School teachers meet for two hours each week to discuss instructional work and ways to support specific students. They plan the language function and outcomes they’ll be working on and talk logistics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, each week they meet to talk about social and emotional needs of students, and there’s always a morning meeting for team leaders to report back on the school-wide administrative issues. In addition to all of that, teachers are on committees to help make decisions about the schools. These school-wide structures help teachers feel supported and connected in their difficult work and keep the staff on the same page about learning goals, but they are often built into the school day, not an addition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This type of group work also mirrors the project-based learning teachers are asking of students. Adults are working on a complex problem together, collaborating with people different from themselves, and bringing their strengths to the table. “High school people think of themselves as subject people,” Sylvan said. “When you group them across subject you allow teachers to focus on students.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>If the purpose of a grade is to communicate specific information about what the student has learned, then the letter-grade system is far too blunt and subjective to offer any useful information about what they've achieved and where they need to work harder. In an \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/letter-grades-deserve-an-f/284372/\" target=\"_blank\">Atlantic article\u003c/a>, Jessica Lahey argues that points-based grading is a subjective measurement masquerading as objectivity. She writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I realized that the current system of points-based grading is highly subjective. As Alfie Kohn has written, 'what grades offer is spurious precision—a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.' A few years ago, I told my students about a study I’d read that showed judges rule more favorably after breaks, so from then on, students left snacks in my office and reminded me to take breaks when they knew I would be grading their work. If the purpose of grading is to objectively evaluate student learning and achievement, surely my work breaks and snacking habits should prove irrelevant in their calculation.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/letter-grades-deserve-an-f/284372/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If the purpose of a grade is to communicate specific information about what the student has learned, then the letter-grade system is far too blunt and subjective to offer any useful information about what they've achieved and where they need to work harder. In an \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/letter-grades-deserve-an-f/284372/\" target=\"_blank\">Atlantic article\u003c/a>, Jessica Lahey argues that points-based grading is a subjective measurement masquerading as objectivity. She writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I realized that the current system of points-based grading is highly subjective. As Alfie Kohn has written, 'what grades offer is spurious precision—a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.' A few years ago, I told my students about a study I’d read that showed judges rule more favorably after breaks, so from then on, students left snacks in my office and reminded me to take breaks when they knew I would be grading their work. If the purpose of grading is to objectively evaluate student learning and achievement, surely my work breaks and snacking habits should prove irrelevant in their calculation.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/letter-grades-deserve-an-f/284372/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Can Focus On 'Grit' Work In School Cultures That Reward Grades?",
"title": "Can Focus On 'Grit' Work In School Cultures That Reward Grades?",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34549\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-34549\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/grit-3_slide-128b878762253cdb7a209c1135e3062f9c6d4a76-s40-c85-640x426.jpg\" alt=\" At the Lenox Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y., educators try to teach kids to see struggle as a normal part of learning. \" width=\"640\" height=\"426\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">By Tovia SmithAt the Lenox Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y., educators try to teach kids to see struggle as a normal part of learning.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It's become the new buzz phrase in education: \"Got grit?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the nation, schools are beginning to see grit as key to students' success — and just as important to teach as reading and math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts define grit as persistence, determination and resilience; it's that \u003cem>je ne sais quoi\u003c/em> that drives one kid to practice trumpet or study Spanish for hours — or years — on end, while another quits after the first setback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This quality of being able to sustain your passions, and also work really hard at them, over really disappointingly long periods of time, that's grit,\" says Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who coined the term \"grit\" — and won a MacArthur \"genius grant\" for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a very, I think, American idea in some ways — really pursuing something against all odds,\" she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Duckworth says \u003ca href=\"https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth/pages/research\" target=\"_blank\">her research\u003c/a> shows grit is actually a better predictor of success than IQ or other measures when it comes to achievements as varied as graduating from West Point or winning the National Spelling Bee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even the Obama administration is now on the \"grit\" bandwagon. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/files/2013/02/OET-Draft-Grit-Report-2-17-13.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">2013 report\u003c/a> from the Department of Education laments that kids are learning to \"do school,\" but aren't learning the skills they need in life.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003cem>can\u003c/em> grit be taught?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I hope so,\" says Duckworth, \"but I don't think we have enough evidence to know with certainty that we can do so.\" Part of the problem is figuring out how to assess grit. Duckworth says \"these things are really hard to measure with fidelity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even so, many schools around the nation have embarked on their own experiments — they see the promise of the concept as too great to wait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Letting Kids 'Hit The Wall'\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jason Baehr\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>, a philosophy professor at Loyola Marymount University, recently launched the Intellectual Virtues Academy in Long Beach, Calif. It's a charter middle school that's a kind of petri dish for grit, along with other so-called virtues like intellectual courage and curiosity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is all anecdotal at this point,\" Baehr says. \"But I'll say from our experience in the school, I see [kids learning to be grittier] all the time. ... You can create a classroom culture in which struggle and risk-taking is valued more than just getting the right answer.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"The more we focus on [grit] ... the less likely it is that we make the kind of changes that can help our children go to better schools.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>One way to make kids more tenacious, the thinking goes, is to show them how grit has been important to the success of others, and how mistakes and failures are normal parts of learning — \u003cem>not\u003c/em> reasons to quit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That message underlies every lesson at the Lenox Academy for Gifted Middle School Students in Brooklyn, N.Y., a public school that has been trying to make kids grittier for the past three years. On a recent day, in a typical lesson, a social studies class is studying Steve Jobs. Kids raise their hands to offer examples of Jobs' grit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"He had failed one of the Mac projects he was creating,\" says one student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"He used his mistakes to help him along his journey,\" says another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students also get to practice being gritty themselves. When a kid struggles to answer a question, for example, teachers resist the urge to swoop in and offer hints. Instead, they let students squirm a little through an awkward silence. The idea is to get kids \u003cem>comfortable\u003c/em> with struggle so they see it as just a normal part of learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tom Hoerr leads the New City School, a private elementary school in St. Louis, Mo., that has also been working on grit. \"One of the sayings that you hear around here a great deal is, 'If our kids have graduated from here with nothing but success, then we have failed them, because they haven't learned how to respond to frustration and failure.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of focusing on the theory known as \"multiple intelligences\" and trying to teach kids in their own style, Hoerr says he's now pulling kids out of their comfort zones intentionally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The message is that life isn't always easy,\" Hoerr says. His goal is to make sure \"that no matter how talented [students are], they hit the wall, so they can learn to pick themselves up, hit the wall again and pick themselves up again, and ultimately persevere and succeed.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is a major adjustment for everyone — perhaps most of all for parents. \"It's really easy to talk about in the abstract,\" Hoerr says. \"Parents love the notion of grit; they all want their kids to have it. However ... no parent wants their kid to cry.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-34545\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/grit-2-c4c2553c97573943e390bdaf191ebd556557ffb7-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Christa Quint teaches a math class at the Lenox Academy. Teachers at the school resist the urge to offer hints when a student struggles with a question.\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\">Changing Mindsets To Help Kids Persevere \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to get parents and kids on board with the idea of struggle, educators say, they first need to be convinced that their struggle is likely to pay off. Or, as Stanford University professor Carol Dweck puts it, they need to have a \"growth mindset\" — the belief that success comes from effort — and not a \"fixed mindset\" — the notion that people succeed because they are born with a \"gift\" of intelligence or talent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's really hard to have high tolerance if you believe that your abilities or intelligence are fixed,\" says Eduardo Briceno, CEO of Mindset Works, a company he co-founded with Dweck. \"Because if you believe 'I can't change my own abilities,' then trying hard doesn't make any sense. It's like pounding your head against the wall.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, educators say they see it all the time: Kids with fixed mindsets who think they just don't have the \"gift\" don't bother applying themselves. Conversely, kids with fixed mindsets who were always told they were \"gifted\" and skated through school tend to crumble when they hit their first challenge; rather than risk looking like a loser, they just quit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Kids came to our middle school, and when that curriculum got tough, a majority of them retreated,\" says Joe Giamportone, assistant principal of Lenox Academy. \"Performance declined over the course of three years.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seventh-grader Jamal Parris is typical. After arriving at Lenox Academy, he began to struggle in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I started thinking that I wasn't that smart and I didn't deserve to make it into this school,\" says Parris. \"When I was in fifth grade, I used to be so good at math. And then when I came to Lenox Academy, like, I just hit a wall. I was like, '\u003cem>Whaaat\u003c/em>? Letters in math?!'\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I couldn't understand anything,\" he continues. \"Some days I wouldn't even go home to study, because I was like, 'I'm just gonna get a low grade anyway, even if I study.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's what launched Giamportone on a kind of crusade three years ago to root out that kind of fixed mindset. Since then, he says, everyone at school has done such a mental and cultural 180 that even the very name of the Lenox Academy for Gifted Middle School Students is like a dirty word.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We don't use the word 'gifted' — \u003cem>ever\u003c/em>,\" \u003cspan style=\"color: #666699\">Giamportone\u003c/span> says. \"In our school, you will \u003cem>never\u003c/em> hear it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\n\u003ch3>\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080\">Testing For Grit And Mindset\u003c/span>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080\">University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth says \"grit\" can be a better predictor of success than IQ or other measures. You can take a \u003ca href=\"https://sasupenn.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_06f6QSOS2pZW9qR\" target=\"_blank\">\"grit scale quiz\" here\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080\">Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, has championed the notion of a \"growth mindset,\" the belief that success comes from effort, not innate intelligence or talent. Take her \u003ca href=\"http://mindsetonline.com/testyourmindset/step1.php\" target=\"_blank\">\"mindset\" test here\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\" 'Smart' is like a curse,\" adds social studies teacher June Davenport.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the school is plastered with signs and handmade posters promoting a \"growth mindset.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is a term in every class: 'Use the growth mindset. Have the growth mindset,' \" says eighth-grader Alina Blaze. \"You can put forth the effort to get something that you want.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The message is not unlike what Grandma always said: \"You can do anything,\" \"Just practice, practice, practice,\" and, \"Don't give up!\" But Blaze says what convinced her was the science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mindset Works curriculum starts with Brainology, a kid-friendly computer-animated crash course in how the brain works like a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it gets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I learned how, every single day, the more you learn things, the more neurons that pop out of your brain,\" says sixth-grader Nyashka Laurore. Even after a few lessons, she says, she stopped feeling like school was just something she couldn't do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changing Approaches In The Classroom\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The focus is always more on putting out effort than on getting the right answers. Teachers have been trained to change the way they see students, and how they speak to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"5b3d60e76efce255499c3a84ce4c8eba\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kids no longer hear \"You're so smart!\" or \"Brilliant!\" Rather, teachers praise students for their focus and determination. \"You must have worked really hard!\" or \"To have performed this well, you must have put out a lot of effort.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The adjustment isn't always easy for teachers trained to focus on hitting high scores on standardized tests. \"It's really hard in certain subject areas to say that your process is more important than your product,\" says science teacher Nicole Trubnikov. \"But that is the underlying principle of this program — to say that it's all the effort that you put in that's most important.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some schools even grade students on \"growth mindset\" and \"grit.\" It doesn't make it onto report cards at Lenox, but kids do get evaluated on it in class by teachers — and by other kids\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one history class, for example, eighth-graders observe their classmates discussing a reading passage, and then rate them on things like \"learning from past mistakes.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Normally, Timothy, he likes to talk to his friends outside of the group and, like, interrupt, and he don't pay attention that well, but he's able to take charge,\" offers one student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"If I was an outsider and I was hearing this conversation, I might think that this was some kind of hippie-dippy love fest,\" concedes the teacher, Nathan Cearley. \"But what you see is actually a more rigorous and risky learning environment.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In three years, Cearley says, he's seen kids grow less afraid of making mistakes, and more willing to ask for help. Test scores at Lenox have jumped 10 to 15 points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Latest Fad In Education?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number of schools using Brainology is expected to double this year, from 500 to 1,000. But even Briceno concedes they are still just small islands in a culture that may give lip service to earning an \"A for effort,\" but that still rewards grades and scores above all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela Duckworth, the grit guru who's also experimenting with making middle-schoolers grittier, agrees. A limited intervention, she says, if not consistently reinforced in and out of school, can only have limited results. \"We don't know whether we've had any effect — the jury's out,\" says Duckworth. \"It just seems to me extremely implausible that that's going to permanently and impressively change a child.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, even after three years at Lenox Academy, sometimes all it takes is one bad test score for kids to lapse back into the old mindset of \"I'm just not good at math.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Grit as a goal seems to be multiply flawed and very disturbing,\" says education writer Alfie Kohn. For starters, he says, \"the benefits of failure are vastly overstated, and the assumption that kids will pick themselves up and try even harder next time, darn it — that's wishful thinking.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kohn sees the focus on grit as just the latest fad in education that will soon \"burn itself out,\" like many have before. He doesn't believe that kids today are any less gritty than before. And he says the research showing that gritty people tend to be more successful doesn't really offer any new insight. As Kohn put it, \"It's a pure circular assumption, like persistent people persist.\"\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Besides, Kohn says, if there's a problem with how kids are learning, the onus should be on schools to get better at how they teach — not on kids to get better at enduring more of the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Grit's taken off as a fad in education, because that's a convenient distraction that doesn't address the pedagogical and curricular problems in the schools,\" he says. \"But the more we focus on [grit] ... the less likely it is that we make the kind of changes that can help our children go to better schools.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some have also raised concerns about grading kids on grit and with calling grit a \"good character trait\" or a \"virtue.\" As University of Pennsylvania education professor Joan Goodman puts it, those are very loaded words with moral overtones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The language is important, because you're talking about virtues, you're talking about character, and ... you don't want to generate the notion that you are a bad kid if you are not gritty, and you're a good kid if you are,\" says Goodman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Besides, Goodman says, grit may not be a character trait at all, but rather a byproduct of other traits, like confidence, courage and curiosity. And, she says, people can be gritty in some things but not others\u003cem>. \u003c/em>A kid might be passionate about chess, for example, but completely disengaged in chemistry class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's a point well taken by Duckworth. She agrees that schools, teachers and parents all share in the responsibility to help inspire kids so they're intrinsically motivated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I don't think people can become truly gritty and great at things they don't love,\" Duckworth says. \"So when we try to develop grit in kids, we also need to find and help them cultivate their passions. That's as much a part of the equation here as the hard work and the persistence.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg kind of question. Passion may drive kids to be gritty, but being gritty and able to tolerate failure also enables kids to develop and pursue a passion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just ask eighth-grader Alina Blaze. Several years ago, she quit the viola out of fear that she would embarrass herself. \"I found it so difficult to learn, and I said, 'I'm just not good at this, so I might as well not try,' \" she says. \"And soon enough, I just put my viola up there on top of the closet, and that was the end of that.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, three years into the growth-mindset training at Lenox Academy, Blaze says, she believes \"you \u003cem>can\u003c/em> teach old dogs new tricks.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think that if I just put in enough effort I can be the next Yow Ming,\" she declares. As her classmates begin to giggle beside her, she stammers, \"I mean, Yo-Yo Ming. I mean, Yo-Yo Ma!\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mistakes like that one will always be embarrassing, Blaze says. But now, she recovers more easily. She's one who got the message, as they say around here, that the secret to success is failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Does+Teaching+Kids+To+Get+%27Gritty%27+Help+Them+Get+Ahead%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Education circles are abuzz with a new concept: that resilience and persistence are just as important as intelligence to predicting student success and achievement. But can \"grit\" actually be taught?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34549\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-34549\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/grit-3_slide-128b878762253cdb7a209c1135e3062f9c6d4a76-s40-c85-640x426.jpg\" alt=\" At the Lenox Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y., educators try to teach kids to see struggle as a normal part of learning. \" width=\"640\" height=\"426\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">By Tovia SmithAt the Lenox Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y., educators try to teach kids to see struggle as a normal part of learning.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It's become the new buzz phrase in education: \"Got grit?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the nation, schools are beginning to see grit as key to students' success — and just as important to teach as reading and math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts define grit as persistence, determination and resilience; it's that \u003cem>je ne sais quoi\u003c/em> that drives one kid to practice trumpet or study Spanish for hours — or years — on end, while another quits after the first setback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This quality of being able to sustain your passions, and also work really hard at them, over really disappointingly long periods of time, that's grit,\" says Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who coined the term \"grit\" — and won a MacArthur \"genius grant\" for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a very, I think, American idea in some ways — really pursuing something against all odds,\" she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Duckworth says \u003ca href=\"https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth/pages/research\" target=\"_blank\">her research\u003c/a> shows grit is actually a better predictor of success than IQ or other measures when it comes to achievements as varied as graduating from West Point or winning the National Spelling Bee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even the Obama administration is now on the \"grit\" bandwagon. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/files/2013/02/OET-Draft-Grit-Report-2-17-13.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">2013 report\u003c/a> from the Department of Education laments that kids are learning to \"do school,\" but aren't learning the skills they need in life.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003cem>can\u003c/em> grit be taught?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I hope so,\" says Duckworth, \"but I don't think we have enough evidence to know with certainty that we can do so.\" Part of the problem is figuring out how to assess grit. Duckworth says \"these things are really hard to measure with fidelity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even so, many schools around the nation have embarked on their own experiments — they see the promise of the concept as too great to wait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Letting Kids 'Hit The Wall'\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jason Baehr\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>, a philosophy professor at Loyola Marymount University, recently launched the Intellectual Virtues Academy in Long Beach, Calif. It's a charter middle school that's a kind of petri dish for grit, along with other so-called virtues like intellectual courage and curiosity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is all anecdotal at this point,\" Baehr says. \"But I'll say from our experience in the school, I see [kids learning to be grittier] all the time. ... You can create a classroom culture in which struggle and risk-taking is valued more than just getting the right answer.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"The more we focus on [grit] ... the less likely it is that we make the kind of changes that can help our children go to better schools.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>One way to make kids more tenacious, the thinking goes, is to show them how grit has been important to the success of others, and how mistakes and failures are normal parts of learning — \u003cem>not\u003c/em> reasons to quit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That message underlies every lesson at the Lenox Academy for Gifted Middle School Students in Brooklyn, N.Y., a public school that has been trying to make kids grittier for the past three years. On a recent day, in a typical lesson, a social studies class is studying Steve Jobs. Kids raise their hands to offer examples of Jobs' grit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"He had failed one of the Mac projects he was creating,\" says one student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"He used his mistakes to help him along his journey,\" says another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students also get to practice being gritty themselves. When a kid struggles to answer a question, for example, teachers resist the urge to swoop in and offer hints. Instead, they let students squirm a little through an awkward silence. The idea is to get kids \u003cem>comfortable\u003c/em> with struggle so they see it as just a normal part of learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tom Hoerr leads the New City School, a private elementary school in St. Louis, Mo., that has also been working on grit. \"One of the sayings that you hear around here a great deal is, 'If our kids have graduated from here with nothing but success, then we have failed them, because they haven't learned how to respond to frustration and failure.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of focusing on the theory known as \"multiple intelligences\" and trying to teach kids in their own style, Hoerr says he's now pulling kids out of their comfort zones intentionally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The message is that life isn't always easy,\" Hoerr says. His goal is to make sure \"that no matter how talented [students are], they hit the wall, so they can learn to pick themselves up, hit the wall again and pick themselves up again, and ultimately persevere and succeed.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is a major adjustment for everyone — perhaps most of all for parents. \"It's really easy to talk about in the abstract,\" Hoerr says. \"Parents love the notion of grit; they all want their kids to have it. However ... no parent wants their kid to cry.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-34545\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/grit-2-c4c2553c97573943e390bdaf191ebd556557ffb7-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Christa Quint teaches a math class at the Lenox Academy. Teachers at the school resist the urge to offer hints when a student struggles with a question.\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\">Changing Mindsets To Help Kids Persevere \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to get parents and kids on board with the idea of struggle, educators say, they first need to be convinced that their struggle is likely to pay off. Or, as Stanford University professor Carol Dweck puts it, they need to have a \"growth mindset\" — the belief that success comes from effort — and not a \"fixed mindset\" — the notion that people succeed because they are born with a \"gift\" of intelligence or talent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's really hard to have high tolerance if you believe that your abilities or intelligence are fixed,\" says Eduardo Briceno, CEO of Mindset Works, a company he co-founded with Dweck. \"Because if you believe 'I can't change my own abilities,' then trying hard doesn't make any sense. It's like pounding your head against the wall.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, educators say they see it all the time: Kids with fixed mindsets who think they just don't have the \"gift\" don't bother applying themselves. Conversely, kids with fixed mindsets who were always told they were \"gifted\" and skated through school tend to crumble when they hit their first challenge; rather than risk looking like a loser, they just quit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Kids came to our middle school, and when that curriculum got tough, a majority of them retreated,\" says Joe Giamportone, assistant principal of Lenox Academy. \"Performance declined over the course of three years.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seventh-grader Jamal Parris is typical. After arriving at Lenox Academy, he began to struggle in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I started thinking that I wasn't that smart and I didn't deserve to make it into this school,\" says Parris. \"When I was in fifth grade, I used to be so good at math. And then when I came to Lenox Academy, like, I just hit a wall. I was like, '\u003cem>Whaaat\u003c/em>? Letters in math?!'\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I couldn't understand anything,\" he continues. \"Some days I wouldn't even go home to study, because I was like, 'I'm just gonna get a low grade anyway, even if I study.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's what launched Giamportone on a kind of crusade three years ago to root out that kind of fixed mindset. Since then, he says, everyone at school has done such a mental and cultural 180 that even the very name of the Lenox Academy for Gifted Middle School Students is like a dirty word.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We don't use the word 'gifted' — \u003cem>ever\u003c/em>,\" \u003cspan style=\"color: #666699\">Giamportone\u003c/span> says. \"In our school, you will \u003cem>never\u003c/em> hear it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\n\u003ch3>\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080\">Testing For Grit And Mindset\u003c/span>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080\">University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth says \"grit\" can be a better predictor of success than IQ or other measures. You can take a \u003ca href=\"https://sasupenn.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_06f6QSOS2pZW9qR\" target=\"_blank\">\"grit scale quiz\" here\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080\">Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, has championed the notion of a \"growth mindset,\" the belief that success comes from effort, not innate intelligence or talent. Take her \u003ca href=\"http://mindsetonline.com/testyourmindset/step1.php\" target=\"_blank\">\"mindset\" test here\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\" 'Smart' is like a curse,\" adds social studies teacher June Davenport.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the school is plastered with signs and handmade posters promoting a \"growth mindset.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is a term in every class: 'Use the growth mindset. Have the growth mindset,' \" says eighth-grader Alina Blaze. \"You can put forth the effort to get something that you want.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The message is not unlike what Grandma always said: \"You can do anything,\" \"Just practice, practice, practice,\" and, \"Don't give up!\" But Blaze says what convinced her was the science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mindset Works curriculum starts with Brainology, a kid-friendly computer-animated crash course in how the brain works like a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it gets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I learned how, every single day, the more you learn things, the more neurons that pop out of your brain,\" says sixth-grader Nyashka Laurore. Even after a few lessons, she says, she stopped feeling like school was just something she couldn't do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Changing Approaches In The Classroom\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The focus is always more on putting out effort than on getting the right answers. Teachers have been trained to change the way they see students, and how they speak to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kids no longer hear \"You're so smart!\" or \"Brilliant!\" Rather, teachers praise students for their focus and determination. \"You must have worked really hard!\" or \"To have performed this well, you must have put out a lot of effort.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The adjustment isn't always easy for teachers trained to focus on hitting high scores on standardized tests. \"It's really hard in certain subject areas to say that your process is more important than your product,\" says science teacher Nicole Trubnikov. \"But that is the underlying principle of this program — to say that it's all the effort that you put in that's most important.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some schools even grade students on \"growth mindset\" and \"grit.\" It doesn't make it onto report cards at Lenox, but kids do get evaluated on it in class by teachers — and by other kids\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one history class, for example, eighth-graders observe their classmates discussing a reading passage, and then rate them on things like \"learning from past mistakes.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Normally, Timothy, he likes to talk to his friends outside of the group and, like, interrupt, and he don't pay attention that well, but he's able to take charge,\" offers one student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"If I was an outsider and I was hearing this conversation, I might think that this was some kind of hippie-dippy love fest,\" concedes the teacher, Nathan Cearley. \"But what you see is actually a more rigorous and risky learning environment.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In three years, Cearley says, he's seen kids grow less afraid of making mistakes, and more willing to ask for help. Test scores at Lenox have jumped 10 to 15 points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Latest Fad In Education?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number of schools using Brainology is expected to double this year, from 500 to 1,000. But even Briceno concedes they are still just small islands in a culture that may give lip service to earning an \"A for effort,\" but that still rewards grades and scores above all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela Duckworth, the grit guru who's also experimenting with making middle-schoolers grittier, agrees. A limited intervention, she says, if not consistently reinforced in and out of school, can only have limited results. \"We don't know whether we've had any effect — the jury's out,\" says Duckworth. \"It just seems to me extremely implausible that that's going to permanently and impressively change a child.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, even after three years at Lenox Academy, sometimes all it takes is one bad test score for kids to lapse back into the old mindset of \"I'm just not good at math.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Grit as a goal seems to be multiply flawed and very disturbing,\" says education writer Alfie Kohn. For starters, he says, \"the benefits of failure are vastly overstated, and the assumption that kids will pick themselves up and try even harder next time, darn it — that's wishful thinking.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kohn sees the focus on grit as just the latest fad in education that will soon \"burn itself out,\" like many have before. He doesn't believe that kids today are any less gritty than before. And he says the research showing that gritty people tend to be more successful doesn't really offer any new insight. As Kohn put it, \"It's a pure circular assumption, like persistent people persist.\"\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Besides, Kohn says, if there's a problem with how kids are learning, the onus should be on schools to get better at how they teach — not on kids to get better at enduring more of the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Grit's taken off as a fad in education, because that's a convenient distraction that doesn't address the pedagogical and curricular problems in the schools,\" he says. \"But the more we focus on [grit] ... the less likely it is that we make the kind of changes that can help our children go to better schools.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some have also raised concerns about grading kids on grit and with calling grit a \"good character trait\" or a \"virtue.\" As University of Pennsylvania education professor Joan Goodman puts it, those are very loaded words with moral overtones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The language is important, because you're talking about virtues, you're talking about character, and ... you don't want to generate the notion that you are a bad kid if you are not gritty, and you're a good kid if you are,\" says Goodman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Besides, Goodman says, grit may not be a character trait at all, but rather a byproduct of other traits, like confidence, courage and curiosity. And, she says, people can be gritty in some things but not others\u003cem>. \u003c/em>A kid might be passionate about chess, for example, but completely disengaged in chemistry class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's a point well taken by Duckworth. She agrees that schools, teachers and parents all share in the responsibility to help inspire kids so they're intrinsically motivated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I don't think people can become truly gritty and great at things they don't love,\" Duckworth says. \"So when we try to develop grit in kids, we also need to find and help them cultivate their passions. That's as much a part of the equation here as the hard work and the persistence.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg kind of question. Passion may drive kids to be gritty, but being gritty and able to tolerate failure also enables kids to develop and pursue a passion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just ask eighth-grader Alina Blaze. Several years ago, she quit the viola out of fear that she would embarrass herself. \"I found it so difficult to learn, and I said, 'I'm just not good at this, so I might as well not try,' \" she says. \"And soon enough, I just put my viola up there on top of the closet, and that was the end of that.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, three years into the growth-mindset training at Lenox Academy, Blaze says, she believes \"you \u003cem>can\u003c/em> teach old dogs new tricks.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think that if I just put in enough effort I can be the next Yow Ming,\" she declares. As her classmates begin to giggle beside her, she stammers, \"I mean, Yo-Yo Ming. I mean, Yo-Yo Ma!\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mistakes like that one will always be embarrassing, Blaze says. But now, she recovers more easily. She's one who got the message, as they say around here, that the secret to success is failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Does+Teaching+Kids+To+Get+%27Gritty%27+Help+Them+Get+Ahead%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "What Keeps Students Motivated to Learn?",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34510\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34510\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/erinscott_-7080.jpg\" alt=\"erinscott_-7080\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/erinscott_-7080.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/erinscott_-7080-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/erinscott_-7080-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Educators have lots of ideas about how to improve education, to better reach learners and to give students the skills they’ll need in college and beyond the classroom. But often those conversations remain between adults. The real test of any idea is in the classroom, though students are rarely asked about what they think about their education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A panel of seven students attending schools that are part of the “\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/deeper-learning/\">deeper learning\u003c/a>” movement gave their perspective on what it means for them to learn and how educators can work to create a school culture that fosters creativity, collaboration, trust, the ability to fail, and perhaps most importantly, one in which students want to participate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>INTEGRATED PROJECTS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Project-based learning is the norm among these students, but they also have a lot of ideas about what makes a good project work. Students want projects to be \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/what-does-design-thinking-look-like-in-school/\" target=\"_blank\">integrated across subjects\u003c/a>, not separated by discipline. “When it’s integrated, each student can find something they like and everyone can get into it,” said Erina Chavez, a junior at \u003ca href=\"http://www.hightechhigh.org/schools/HTHNC/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High North County\u003c/a>. “I love when projects are integrated so you can find so many different aspects,” said Daniel Cohen, also a North County junior.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"Treat students like adults. If the students feel like they’re worth it they’ll act more like adults.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Students described an integrated biology and art project that asked them to research the origins of a disease that had significance for them, and to create an art project around it. They took drastically different approaches to researching an illness that ran in their family -- from interviewing family members about the experience for a video, to investigating whether stubbornness is genetic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first Chavez wasn’t excited about the project, but she ended up enjoying it because she loves art. “All of us found our own solution to the problem and our own answers with the guidance of our teachers,” said another North County junior Paris Gramann. “It was a struggle because we didn’t really know where we were going, but I always find those are the best ones.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students were also excited that this project resulted in a real product that they could display. Their work was recognized and displayed at the University of California at San Diego art gallery. “It got really real at the time it moved up to the exhibition,” said Chavez. “It wasn’t something we were just turning in for a grade, but it was something that we could do well and beautifully.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Middle school students also appreciate those projects where different subjects are integrated. \u003ca href=\"http://www.hightechhigh.org/schools/HTMCV/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech Middle Chula Vista\u003c/a> seventh grader Ana de Almeida Amaral described an integrated humanities and math/science project, when students read Sherlock Holmes, wrote their own versions, and became experts in one aspect of forensics. Together they created a crime scene in their classroom and then taught everyone assembled about a part of the forensics process through a stop animation video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>INTEREST-BASED AND RELEVANT\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students like to know why they're learning something and they want to access that information through \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/01/students-own-interests-will-drive-the-school-day-of-the-future/\" target=\"_blank\">a lens that interests them\u003c/a>. “If teachers give broad guidelines for the project and then have students do something they’re interested in it will bring students along the whole time,” said Gramann. “Treat students like adults. If the students feel like they’re worth it they’ll act more like adults.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Projects can often last for several weeks, so students need motivation to stay engaged and committed to deeply engaging a topic. \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/11/how-to-help-students-develop-the-motivation-to-learn/\" target=\"_blank\">Authentic choice\u003c/a> is one aspect of allowing that to happen. Students on the panel described real choices they make about their education on a daily basis, from which book they’ll read in Humanities to the different topics they want to research. And even though these students sound like natural learners, many of them haven’t always been. They need teachers to show them why they should care about each learning goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you really let them know, and use real life problems, it will help them understand it and they will feel like it’s worth doing,” said de Almeida Amaral. “The biggest thing that’s necessary is making sure the projects connect to the students,” said Gibran Huerta, a junior at \u003ca href=\"http://envisionacademy.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Envision Academy\u003c/a> in Oakland. “Teachers tend to give projects and benchmarks and create topics around things that students don’t really connect to.” He was adamant that learning how to connect a topic to oneself is the key to learning. “Throughout middle school you have to develop skills of how things connect to yourself,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MAKE IT HANDS-ON\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you get hands-on and they’re really interacting with what they’re doing, it’s really helpful,” said Trey Lewis, a junior at North County. He’s had teachers that lecture a lot and much \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\" target=\"_blank\">prefers doing the work to being told about it\u003c/a>. He says it also adds a challenge since most hands-on projects at High Tech High North County are group projects, requiring \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/how-to-foster-collaboration-and-team-spirit/\" target=\"_blank\">collaboration\u003c/a>, a leadership skill that all students agree isn’t always easy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Collaborating productively is a leadership skill at this school,” said Dora Aguilar, a junior at \u003ca href=\"http://www.es-cat.org/\" target=\"_blank\">City Arts and Tech\u003c/a>, part of the Envision network. She says that while it can be hard, it can also be very rewarding because working with other people allows her to see the project through the eyes of her peers. Other students talked about difficult collaborations too, emphasizing that it runs more smoothly if one group member agrees to keep everyone on track. They also said it gets easier over time as students begin to understand one another’s needs and motivations and can begin to operate as a cohesive group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KNOWING TEACHERS CARE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number one thing that students on the panel said makes them want to try hard and succeed is knowing that teachers care about them and are \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/02/what-students-need-from-teachers/\" target=\"_blank\">part of the learning journey with them\u003c/a>. “I am not the perfect student,” said Aguilar. “What really helped me was the teachers and staff here who showed me that they cared about me. Students can feel that.” She described hating math for most of her life until a good teacher described what she could do with strong math skills in the future. “It got me motivated to learn more and I showed my potential as a student, which I never knew I had,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every student reiterated that \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/09/how-will-students-perform-depends-on-teachers-expectations/\" target=\"_blank\">high expectations and strong support from teachers \u003c/a>are crucial. “I feel motivated because the teachers make me feel worth it,” said Gramann. “I feel that I have responsibility and credibility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cohen actually transferred out of High Tech High North County at one point, thinking the school model wasn’t for him. But he quickly came back. “The teachers really do care about us and I think that’s something that makes our school really unique and special,” he said. Others reiterated that feeling connected to school is important to them. “It’s that strong connection between teachers and students that makes students feel like they are at home,” said Huerta. Envision Academy only has 400 students and teachers know all the students by name, contributing to the feeling of “being known.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LEARNING FROM FAILURE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every student on the panel had a story of big failure on an important class project. But because the culture of their schools \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/11/beyond-talent-and-smarts-why-even-geniuses-struggle/\" target=\"_blank\">encourage them to learn from mistakes\u003c/a>, they can clearly articulate what they’d do differently next time and even laugh about it. Lewis described a solar oven he made that was working great up until the day of the exhibition when it started falling apart. “When we have projects that go wrong last minute and we have to think on our feet and fix it, I definitely think that’s a mistake that’s going to help me in the future,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cohen described presenting a project expecting his group mates to be well prepared and have the correct information. But one student’s research was faulty and Cohen hadn’t seen it until the presentation, putting him in a difficult position. “I know now to check over all my work, always revise, make sure all the work is accurate,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>EVALUATING WORK\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Project-based learning affords many \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/01/the-importance-of-low-stakes-student-feedback/\" target=\"_blank\">opportunities for feedback\u003c/a> both from teachers and from peers. “Some of the most meaningful feedback I’ve gotten is from students,” said Lewis. Students get used to giving and taking critique daily with each other and hearing it from educators as well. Their ease with it comes from practice and with the awareness that feedback isn’t the end of the process, it’s a part of improving their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One tip students offer to educators: When evaluating student work, frame feedback in terms of the learner’s goals instead of referring to the standards. “Goals are more motivating for students to hear,” said Aguilar. While the education policy world may be obsessed with standards, students don’t care about them. They’d rather hear how the skill connects to their lives and interests.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34510\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34510\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/erinscott_-7080.jpg\" alt=\"erinscott_-7080\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/erinscott_-7080.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/erinscott_-7080-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/erinscott_-7080-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Educators have lots of ideas about how to improve education, to better reach learners and to give students the skills they’ll need in college and beyond the classroom. But often those conversations remain between adults. The real test of any idea is in the classroom, though students are rarely asked about what they think about their education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A panel of seven students attending schools that are part of the “\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/deeper-learning/\">deeper learning\u003c/a>” movement gave their perspective on what it means for them to learn and how educators can work to create a school culture that fosters creativity, collaboration, trust, the ability to fail, and perhaps most importantly, one in which students want to participate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>INTEGRATED PROJECTS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Project-based learning is the norm among these students, but they also have a lot of ideas about what makes a good project work. Students want projects to be \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/what-does-design-thinking-look-like-in-school/\" target=\"_blank\">integrated across subjects\u003c/a>, not separated by discipline. “When it’s integrated, each student can find something they like and everyone can get into it,” said Erina Chavez, a junior at \u003ca href=\"http://www.hightechhigh.org/schools/HTHNC/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High North County\u003c/a>. “I love when projects are integrated so you can find so many different aspects,” said Daniel Cohen, also a North County junior.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"Treat students like adults. If the students feel like they’re worth it they’ll act more like adults.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Students described an integrated biology and art project that asked them to research the origins of a disease that had significance for them, and to create an art project around it. They took drastically different approaches to researching an illness that ran in their family -- from interviewing family members about the experience for a video, to investigating whether stubbornness is genetic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first Chavez wasn’t excited about the project, but she ended up enjoying it because she loves art. “All of us found our own solution to the problem and our own answers with the guidance of our teachers,” said another North County junior Paris Gramann. “It was a struggle because we didn’t really know where we were going, but I always find those are the best ones.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students were also excited that this project resulted in a real product that they could display. Their work was recognized and displayed at the University of California at San Diego art gallery. “It got really real at the time it moved up to the exhibition,” said Chavez. “It wasn’t something we were just turning in for a grade, but it was something that we could do well and beautifully.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Middle school students also appreciate those projects where different subjects are integrated. \u003ca href=\"http://www.hightechhigh.org/schools/HTMCV/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech Middle Chula Vista\u003c/a> seventh grader Ana de Almeida Amaral described an integrated humanities and math/science project, when students read Sherlock Holmes, wrote their own versions, and became experts in one aspect of forensics. Together they created a crime scene in their classroom and then taught everyone assembled about a part of the forensics process through a stop animation video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>INTEREST-BASED AND RELEVANT\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students like to know why they're learning something and they want to access that information through \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/01/students-own-interests-will-drive-the-school-day-of-the-future/\" target=\"_blank\">a lens that interests them\u003c/a>. “If teachers give broad guidelines for the project and then have students do something they’re interested in it will bring students along the whole time,” said Gramann. “Treat students like adults. If the students feel like they’re worth it they’ll act more like adults.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Projects can often last for several weeks, so students need motivation to stay engaged and committed to deeply engaging a topic. \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/11/how-to-help-students-develop-the-motivation-to-learn/\" target=\"_blank\">Authentic choice\u003c/a> is one aspect of allowing that to happen. Students on the panel described real choices they make about their education on a daily basis, from which book they’ll read in Humanities to the different topics they want to research. And even though these students sound like natural learners, many of them haven’t always been. They need teachers to show them why they should care about each learning goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you really let them know, and use real life problems, it will help them understand it and they will feel like it’s worth doing,” said de Almeida Amaral. “The biggest thing that’s necessary is making sure the projects connect to the students,” said Gibran Huerta, a junior at \u003ca href=\"http://envisionacademy.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Envision Academy\u003c/a> in Oakland. “Teachers tend to give projects and benchmarks and create topics around things that students don’t really connect to.” He was adamant that learning how to connect a topic to oneself is the key to learning. “Throughout middle school you have to develop skills of how things connect to yourself,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MAKE IT HANDS-ON\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you get hands-on and they’re really interacting with what they’re doing, it’s really helpful,” said Trey Lewis, a junior at North County. He’s had teachers that lecture a lot and much \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\" target=\"_blank\">prefers doing the work to being told about it\u003c/a>. He says it also adds a challenge since most hands-on projects at High Tech High North County are group projects, requiring \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/how-to-foster-collaboration-and-team-spirit/\" target=\"_blank\">collaboration\u003c/a>, a leadership skill that all students agree isn’t always easy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Collaborating productively is a leadership skill at this school,” said Dora Aguilar, a junior at \u003ca href=\"http://www.es-cat.org/\" target=\"_blank\">City Arts and Tech\u003c/a>, part of the Envision network. She says that while it can be hard, it can also be very rewarding because working with other people allows her to see the project through the eyes of her peers. Other students talked about difficult collaborations too, emphasizing that it runs more smoothly if one group member agrees to keep everyone on track. They also said it gets easier over time as students begin to understand one another’s needs and motivations and can begin to operate as a cohesive group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KNOWING TEACHERS CARE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number one thing that students on the panel said makes them want to try hard and succeed is knowing that teachers care about them and are \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/02/what-students-need-from-teachers/\" target=\"_blank\">part of the learning journey with them\u003c/a>. “I am not the perfect student,” said Aguilar. “What really helped me was the teachers and staff here who showed me that they cared about me. Students can feel that.” She described hating math for most of her life until a good teacher described what she could do with strong math skills in the future. “It got me motivated to learn more and I showed my potential as a student, which I never knew I had,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every student reiterated that \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/09/how-will-students-perform-depends-on-teachers-expectations/\" target=\"_blank\">high expectations and strong support from teachers \u003c/a>are crucial. “I feel motivated because the teachers make me feel worth it,” said Gramann. “I feel that I have responsibility and credibility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cohen actually transferred out of High Tech High North County at one point, thinking the school model wasn’t for him. But he quickly came back. “The teachers really do care about us and I think that’s something that makes our school really unique and special,” he said. Others reiterated that feeling connected to school is important to them. “It’s that strong connection between teachers and students that makes students feel like they are at home,” said Huerta. Envision Academy only has 400 students and teachers know all the students by name, contributing to the feeling of “being known.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LEARNING FROM FAILURE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every student on the panel had a story of big failure on an important class project. But because the culture of their schools \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/11/beyond-talent-and-smarts-why-even-geniuses-struggle/\" target=\"_blank\">encourage them to learn from mistakes\u003c/a>, they can clearly articulate what they’d do differently next time and even laugh about it. Lewis described a solar oven he made that was working great up until the day of the exhibition when it started falling apart. “When we have projects that go wrong last minute and we have to think on our feet and fix it, I definitely think that’s a mistake that’s going to help me in the future,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cohen described presenting a project expecting his group mates to be well prepared and have the correct information. But one student’s research was faulty and Cohen hadn’t seen it until the presentation, putting him in a difficult position. “I know now to check over all my work, always revise, make sure all the work is accurate,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>EVALUATING WORK\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Project-based learning affords many \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/01/the-importance-of-low-stakes-student-feedback/\" target=\"_blank\">opportunities for feedback\u003c/a> both from teachers and from peers. “Some of the most meaningful feedback I’ve gotten is from students,” said Lewis. Students get used to giving and taking critique daily with each other and hearing it from educators as well. Their ease with it comes from practice and with the awareness that feedback isn’t the end of the process, it’s a part of improving their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One tip students offer to educators: When evaluating student work, frame feedback in terms of the learner’s goals instead of referring to the standards. “Goals are more motivating for students to hear,” said Aguilar. While the education policy world may be obsessed with standards, students don’t care about them. They’d rather hear how the skill connects to their lives and interests.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "How to Teach the Standards Without Becoming Standardized",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34408\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34408\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/different-pencil.jpg\" alt=\"different-pencil\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/different-pencil.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/different-pencil-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/different-pencil-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Is it possible for teachers to meet standards without teaching in a standardized way? This question is at the heart of the ambivalence around Common Core State Standards for many educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters of the Common Core, including the developers and many educators, maintain that the new standards are a move away from No Child Left Behind because they focus on developing students' skills rather than specific content areas that teachers should cover. But because a standardized test will be used to evaluate how effectively students are learning those skills, the temptation to try and teach to the test still exists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educators say they're already feeling pressure from administrators to teach the same things at the same time in an attempt to ensure strong test results. “It certainly isn’t how you inspire teachers to stay in the classroom,” said veteran teacher \u003ca href=\"http://laufenberg.wordpress.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Diana Laufenberg\u003c/a> at \u003ca href=\"http://educonphilly.org/\" target=\"_blank\">EduCon\u003c/a> conference hosted by \u003ca href=\"http://www.scienceleadership.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Science Leadership Academy\u003c/a> in Philadelphia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it often seems easier or safer to standardize instruction instead of trusting educators to engage and challenge students. But Laufenberg says there's another way. “Teach past the test to this other meaningful, creative work and you will get the test, but you’ll get all this other stuff too,” Laufenberg said. “If you only teach to the test that’s all you’ll get.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Teach past the test to this other meaningful, creative work and you will get the test, but you’ll get all this other stuff too.” \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The standards are the learning goal, the “what” of education, but there are many approaches to how those standards are taught.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you empower kids in that way in a standards-driven space, you see amazing things,” Laufenberg said. Standards can also give teachers a common language to talk about one another’s ideas. “It can open up doors that you might not have otherwise had,” said Chris Loeffler, a third grade teacher at Wilmington Friends School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING STANDARDS IN AUTHENTIC WAYS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>1. \u003c/strong>Make the standards fit into student interests.\u003c/em> “My job as a classroom teacher is to find how the standards fit what the kids want to learn,” said educator Michelle Baldwin. “I could present patterns in ten thousand different ways, but it’s not going to grab them unless they decide.” Using students' interests as the guide would prevent standardization by tapping into the unique qualities of each student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>2. \u003c/strong>Teach students to question.\u003c/em> When kids develop effective questioning techniques they become active partners in constructing learning. They can shape and create meaning by questioning if educators encourage them to do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>3.\u003c/strong> Focus on the skills and language of learning.\u003c/em> When students can talk about their own learning, they can begin to make connections themselves, broadening conversations beyond standards and moving towards authentic, individualized learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>4.\u003c/strong> Be open to many answers\u003c/em>. When educators focus on discovering how students know what they know, and are open to that manifesting in multiple ways, it gives students the opportunity to bring creative demonstrations of learning to the table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>5.\u003c/strong> Have authentic conversations about motivations\u003c/em>. Many students have significant responsibilities outside of school that have made them skeptical about what school can do for them. Starting the year with a conversation about why they are motivated to learn helps educators get to know their students and can help dispel the feeling that school exists in an alternate reality from life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"a7aeba1315f4aa9cd32e586fc0c9af93\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t just one day say ‘learn’ and then move on,” Laufenberg said. “It’s because they’re not engaged in it. They don’t feel connected. It’s not that authentic conversation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>6. \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>Emulate effective risk taking\u003c/em>. Most schools have successful teachers that take risks and garner respect from fellow teachers. Emulate their methods. “It’s not about what they do, it’s about \u003cem>how\u003c/em> they do it,” said one educator at Educon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>7.\u003c/strong> Use professional learning communities\u003c/em>. It’s hard to go against the grain in education, especially without administrative support. Use groups of like-minded educators to work through ideas and to find inspiration.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>8.\u003c/strong> Share the many success stories\u003c/em>. Many teachers at Educon discussed the need for effective educators who teach standards in creative ways that resist standardization to share their work. Creating dialogue around the common goal of a standard “what” and multiple “hows” could help more timid educators find the courage to see the power of education that celebrates the individual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are many ways educators can push back against standardization, but too much change could cause even more confusion. “What we are supposed to be teaching has become a political football,” Laufenberg said. “The danger I see is that every new governor and new president could shift what we are expected to teach.” If education content turns into a constant “churn of the new,” teachers never have time to settle into one set of expectations and get creative with their teaching.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34408\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34408\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/different-pencil.jpg\" alt=\"different-pencil\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/different-pencil.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/different-pencil-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/different-pencil-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Is it possible for teachers to meet standards without teaching in a standardized way? This question is at the heart of the ambivalence around Common Core State Standards for many educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters of the Common Core, including the developers and many educators, maintain that the new standards are a move away from No Child Left Behind because they focus on developing students' skills rather than specific content areas that teachers should cover. But because a standardized test will be used to evaluate how effectively students are learning those skills, the temptation to try and teach to the test still exists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educators say they're already feeling pressure from administrators to teach the same things at the same time in an attempt to ensure strong test results. “It certainly isn’t how you inspire teachers to stay in the classroom,” said veteran teacher \u003ca href=\"http://laufenberg.wordpress.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Diana Laufenberg\u003c/a> at \u003ca href=\"http://educonphilly.org/\" target=\"_blank\">EduCon\u003c/a> conference hosted by \u003ca href=\"http://www.scienceleadership.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Science Leadership Academy\u003c/a> in Philadelphia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it often seems easier or safer to standardize instruction instead of trusting educators to engage and challenge students. But Laufenberg says there's another way. “Teach past the test to this other meaningful, creative work and you will get the test, but you’ll get all this other stuff too,” Laufenberg said. “If you only teach to the test that’s all you’ll get.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Teach past the test to this other meaningful, creative work and you will get the test, but you’ll get all this other stuff too.” \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The standards are the learning goal, the “what” of education, but there are many approaches to how those standards are taught.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you empower kids in that way in a standards-driven space, you see amazing things,” Laufenberg said. Standards can also give teachers a common language to talk about one another’s ideas. “It can open up doors that you might not have otherwise had,” said Chris Loeffler, a third grade teacher at Wilmington Friends School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING STANDARDS IN AUTHENTIC WAYS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>1. \u003c/strong>Make the standards fit into student interests.\u003c/em> “My job as a classroom teacher is to find how the standards fit what the kids want to learn,” said educator Michelle Baldwin. “I could present patterns in ten thousand different ways, but it’s not going to grab them unless they decide.” Using students' interests as the guide would prevent standardization by tapping into the unique qualities of each student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>2. \u003c/strong>Teach students to question.\u003c/em> When kids develop effective questioning techniques they become active partners in constructing learning. They can shape and create meaning by questioning if educators encourage them to do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>3.\u003c/strong> Focus on the skills and language of learning.\u003c/em> When students can talk about their own learning, they can begin to make connections themselves, broadening conversations beyond standards and moving towards authentic, individualized learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>4.\u003c/strong> Be open to many answers\u003c/em>. When educators focus on discovering how students know what they know, and are open to that manifesting in multiple ways, it gives students the opportunity to bring creative demonstrations of learning to the table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>5.\u003c/strong> Have authentic conversations about motivations\u003c/em>. Many students have significant responsibilities outside of school that have made them skeptical about what school can do for them. Starting the year with a conversation about why they are motivated to learn helps educators get to know their students and can help dispel the feeling that school exists in an alternate reality from life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t just one day say ‘learn’ and then move on,” Laufenberg said. “It’s because they’re not engaged in it. They don’t feel connected. It’s not that authentic conversation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>6. \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>Emulate effective risk taking\u003c/em>. Most schools have successful teachers that take risks and garner respect from fellow teachers. Emulate their methods. “It’s not about what they do, it’s about \u003cem>how\u003c/em> they do it,” said one educator at Educon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>7.\u003c/strong> Use professional learning communities\u003c/em>. It’s hard to go against the grain in education, especially without administrative support. Use groups of like-minded educators to work through ideas and to find inspiration.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>8.\u003c/strong> Share the many success stories\u003c/em>. Many teachers at Educon discussed the need for effective educators who teach standards in creative ways that resist standardization to share their work. Creating dialogue around the common goal of a standard “what” and multiple “hows” could help more timid educators find the courage to see the power of education that celebrates the individual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are many ways educators can push back against standardization, but too much change could cause even more confusion. “What we are supposed to be teaching has become a political football,” Laufenberg said. “The danger I see is that every new governor and new president could shift what we are expected to teach.” If education content turns into a constant “churn of the new,” teachers never have time to settle into one set of expectations and get creative with their teaching.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ed.ted.com\">TED-Ed \u003c/a>offers dozens of fascinating videos about all kinds of subjects that draw students in. (To learn more about how to use videos in the classroom, check out \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/teachers-ultimate-guide-to-using-videos/\">MindShift's Teachers' Ultimate Guide to Videos) \u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This series of videos, called \u003ca href=\"http://ed.ted.com/series/playing-with-language\">Playing With Language \u003c/a>explores issues of language and learning from different perspectives. Here are four from the collection.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ed.ted.com/lessons/beyond-the-shadow-of-a-doubt-gina-cooke\">1. Why is there a \"b\" in doubt\u003c/a>?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Say the word \"doubt\" aloud. What is that \"b\" doing there? Does it have any purpose? Gina Cooke explains the long and winding history of \"doubt\" and why the spelling, though it seems random, is a wink to its storied past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>[youtube //www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvABHCJm3aA]\u003c/div>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ed.ted.com/lessons/making-sense-of-spelling-gina-cooke\">2. Making Sense of Spelling\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>What can spelling tell us about relationships between words? While spelling may sometimes seem random or unexpected, this lesson illuminates how peeling back the layers of spelling helps us understand the complex history and meaningful structure of words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>[youtube //www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mbuwZK0lr8]\u003c/div>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-did-english-evolve-kate-gardoqui\">3. How did English evolve?\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>What is the difference between \"a hearty welcome\" and \"a cordial reception\"? In a brief, action-packed history of the English language, Kate Gardoqui explains why these semantically equal phrases evoke such different images.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>[youtube //www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIzFz9T5rhI]\u003c/div>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"http://ed.ted.com/lessons/who-invented-writing-matthew-winkler\">4. Who invented writing?\u003c/a>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Speaking came thousands of years before writing. All writing that has developed since its invention can be traced back to two civilizations: Sumerian and Chinese. Matthew Winkler dissects the evolution of Sumerian cuneiform and explains the difference between writing those first symbols and simply drawing meaning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>[youtube //www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN1BdvzyMPU]\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-34157\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book.jpg\" alt=\"idea-book\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Some university teaching practices are held sacred, but perhaps college professors can learn from progressive teaching tactics of K-12 classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Case in point: \u003ca href=\"http://joshuaspodek.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Joshua Spodek\u003c/a> who attended \u003ca href=\"http://educonphilly.org/\" target=\"_blank\">EduCon\u003c/a>, a conference designed for K-12 educators mostly out of curiosity, left the weekend committed to revamping a New York University graduate level business course using what he learned about the tenets of inquiry-based learning. 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So you teach how you were taught.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“It takes a lot of work because I have to anticipate all their questions,” Spodek said. As a new professor, he was stressed out cramming to make sure he could be the authority on all the information he might need to know. “This way, I first have to think about what’s interesting to the student, about why they care about this,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spodek scrapped his original plan. He spent much of the first class meeting getting to know his students and asking them to share about themselves with one another. Most came from outside the U.S. and had very different reasons for wanting to take the course. Since everything from that point forward would be based on peer collaboration and review, Spodek wanted to be sure each student knew where the others were coming from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first assignment was to sell an apple for the highest profit possible. Spodek learned from K-12 educators at the conference that it isn’t fair to throw students into an inquiry question without preparing them a little. As a class, they discussed strategies for selling an apple, and one student asked how she could sell something if she didn’t know why a person would want it. That's when Spodek knew he’d made the right choice to teach with inquiry -- students were asking the important questions they would need in real world sales. “This class isn’t just going to teach you the theory of doing it, I’m going to teach you how to do it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It might seem obvious that business school classes should be taught based on projects, but they often aren’t. Even though students expect to leave the graduate program with a specific skill set that will get them a job in their field, many business courses don’t teach using real world, hands-on experiences, Spodek said. “When I went to business school, I had a couple of classes that were a little like this,” Spodek said. But most were lectures, case studies, homework, and maybe a little role playing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"bfbc0ac445be2419955ea64f77651825\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea is by the end of this, they’ll be able to do the marketing and sales part of an entrepreneurial start up,” Spodek said. He has encouraged students to work on their own ideas, projects they’d like to bring to market in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several weeks into the 15-week course, he’s getting good feedback from students. One student in her mid-twenties said it was the best class she’d ever taken because it was useful, not theoretical. Spodek isn’t using any tests; instead, students critique each others' work and make improvements. The accountability is built into that review process and students are attentive because they are expected to participate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The experiment has also drastically changed Spodek’s approach to teaching. “I’m a lot more engaged myself,” Spodek said. “Instead of worrying that all the information is comprehensive and thorough, I want them to know they can get that information, but the time in class is better used in an interactive way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spodek is so excited about the experiment that he’s planning to retool all his courses to follow a more project-based, real-world style of inquiry that will have meaning to students. 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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-34157\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book.jpg\" alt=\"idea-book\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/02/idea-book-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Some university teaching practices are held sacred, but perhaps college professors can learn from progressive teaching tactics of K-12 classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Case in point: \u003ca href=\"http://joshuaspodek.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Joshua Spodek\u003c/a> who attended \u003ca href=\"http://educonphilly.org/\" target=\"_blank\">EduCon\u003c/a>, a conference designed for K-12 educators mostly out of curiosity, left the weekend committed to revamping a New York University graduate level business course using what he learned about the tenets of inquiry-based learning. Educators at the conference helped him think through how it would work and pointed out how well suited his class would be for inquiry -- for one primary reason: His students pay money to take courses they have already expressed interest in learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As I heard more people talking, I realized that [an inquiry] style of teaching would be more useful to me than the traditional style,” Spodek said. He’d originally prepared to lead the entrepreneurial marketing and sales class the way many professors do; he sat down and figured out what he wanted students to know, put that information in a specific order and mapped out how he’d teach the content to them. He planned on giving them homework to make sure they were understanding the information he fed them and he would test them to make sure they were doing the work.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“College professors don’t learn how to teach, they learn their subject. So you teach how you were taught.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“It takes a lot of work because I have to anticipate all their questions,” Spodek said. As a new professor, he was stressed out cramming to make sure he could be the authority on all the information he might need to know. “This way, I first have to think about what’s interesting to the student, about why they care about this,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spodek scrapped his original plan. He spent much of the first class meeting getting to know his students and asking them to share about themselves with one another. Most came from outside the U.S. and had very different reasons for wanting to take the course. Since everything from that point forward would be based on peer collaboration and review, Spodek wanted to be sure each student knew where the others were coming from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first assignment was to sell an apple for the highest profit possible. Spodek learned from K-12 educators at the conference that it isn’t fair to throw students into an inquiry question without preparing them a little. As a class, they discussed strategies for selling an apple, and one student asked how she could sell something if she didn’t know why a person would want it. That's when Spodek knew he’d made the right choice to teach with inquiry -- students were asking the important questions they would need in real world sales. “This class isn’t just going to teach you the theory of doing it, I’m going to teach you how to do it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It might seem obvious that business school classes should be taught based on projects, but they often aren’t. Even though students expect to leave the graduate program with a specific skill set that will get them a job in their field, many business courses don’t teach using real world, hands-on experiences, Spodek said. “When I went to business school, I had a couple of classes that were a little like this,” Spodek said. But most were lectures, case studies, homework, and maybe a little role playing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea is by the end of this, they’ll be able to do the marketing and sales part of an entrepreneurial start up,” Spodek said. He has encouraged students to work on their own ideas, projects they’d like to bring to market in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several weeks into the 15-week course, he’s getting good feedback from students. One student in her mid-twenties said it was the best class she’d ever taken because it was useful, not theoretical. Spodek isn’t using any tests; instead, students critique each others' work and make improvements. The accountability is built into that review process and students are attentive because they are expected to participate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The experiment has also drastically changed Spodek’s approach to teaching. “I’m a lot more engaged myself,” Spodek said. “Instead of worrying that all the information is comprehensive and thorough, I want them to know they can get that information, but the time in class is better used in an interactive way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spodek is so excited about the experiment that he’s planning to retool all his courses to follow a more project-based, real-world style of inquiry that will have meaning to students. He’s got a lot more freedom than many K-12 teachers, but he’s still pleased that other faculty are beginning to take notice of his success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, changing post-secondary teaching styles is an uphill battle. “College professors don’t learn how to teach, they learn their subject,” Spodek said. “So you teach how you were taught.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34381\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/9840470025/sizes/l/\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34381\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/real-world.jpg\" alt=\"real-world\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/real-world.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/real-world-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/real-world-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Katie Gavares spent three weeks in England during her junior year at \u003ca href=\"http://www.hightechhigh.org/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High\u003c/a> in San Diego working with British educators to incorporate project-based learning. It was a mandatory school internship, a standard part of High Tech High’s education program, and it left a lasting impact on her. High Tech High is a network of charter schools devoted to project-based and real-world learning and a leader in the movement to spread tools and tactics to deepen learning nationwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I took away so much from my experience,” Gavares said recently on a \u003ca href=\"http://dlmooc.deeper-learning.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Deeper Learning MOOC\u003c/a> panel dedicated to the opportunities and challenges around internships for middle and high school students. “It’s different to be the lead on an all-day thing, and being in charge of having everyone understand a concept by the end of the day.” Gavares worked for one week with university professors and high school headmasters talking through how school structures had to change to make room for project-based learning. During the second week, she helped teachers develop projects, and in the third week she worked with students as they executed the projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Very often we mispredict what our young folks are able to do... A stretch for a student is a good thing and students often respond to that stretch and do things even we weren’t sure they could do.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“Because I saw such dramatic and quick changes, I felt like I was really getting through to the people I was talking to,” Gavares said. She’s still in touch with many of the educators she met during the internship and even does project-critiques with her teacher-partner in England. She says it was the most memorable experience of high school and helped make her the person she is today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gavares’ passion and excitement about her internship demonstrates the power of allowing students to collaborate with professionals in the real world. As a high school student, she brought expertise to British educators that they valued, and by sharing her deep knowledge of and personal experience with project-based learning from a student perspective, Gavares learned about some of the challenges that well-meaning administrators face too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The stakes were very very high and there was a high degree of uncertainty,” said Elliot Washor, co-founder of \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Big Pictures Schools\u003c/a> and a Deeper Learning MOOC panelist. Big Picture Learning is a non-profit that helps schools redesign systems based on student interests. “What she did had value to herself and to that organization and that made the stakes very high.” Gavares was invested in the project because of her positive experience with project-based learning and she wanted to do a good job for her partners. Her motivation to work hard and succeed were tied to a sense of purpose and the understanding that her work was valued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also gained valuable knowledge about where she’d like to grow in the future. “I’d like to get better at problem-solving,” Gavares said. “There were so many problems because English schools are so structurally different. And in these meetings we would come across the same problems. I was having a hard time not getting pulled down by this one barrier that we were really struggling with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STRUCTURING INTERNSHIPS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Internships are a core part of the education at certain schools, and there are at least two ways to structure internships at this level. High Tech High chooses to send its students on their internships for a three-week chunk of time in either January or June. That model fits their scheduling needs best and it allows teachers to visit students at their sites so they can bring elements of that experiential learning back into the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big Pictures Schools favor a model where students are working with mentors in the field two days a week. The internship is not an isolated experience, but a core part of the pedagogy. “We couldn’t run our school without our mentors,” said Joe Battaglia, Director of Curriculum and Instruction at \u003ca href=\"http://metcenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">The Met,\u003c/a> a Big Picture school in Providence. They’re essential for us.” School administrators encourage the mentors to hold students to the same high standards they’d expect of employees. \"We have an expectation that the work will be high quality and real because it raises the stakes,” Battaglia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"9477c0ae3cf3b512ea115ae01fc01688\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students spend a large portion of their week at internship sites, so it’s important that advisers check in with students and mentors and help make connections to school standards. “Our advisers create a specific individual learning plan and set of curriculum for students that are based on standards, but very rarely will it cover all of them,” Battaglia said. “But I also have a bias that I don’t think they’re all covered in a traditional setting either.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Met makes a calculation to cover fewer standards more deeply and to have advisers deeply involved in shaping the experience so that the student gets practice in areas where they have skill gaps. “The point isn’t to be proficient at the specific work of that place, but to learn problem solving, to collaborate, to be able to have a foundation to develop academic investigations,” Battaglia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To help link the internship experience with the classroom, there's plenty of documentation. Students keep a journal about what they’re learning through the internship and often take pictures and videos to chronicle their reflections. “We have structures of rubrics and scales and scaffolds to help them reflect,” Battaglia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SPECIFIC SKILLS AREN'T THE OBJECTIVE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The biggest value of the internship experience is social. “It wasn’t about learning a career or a particular job,” said Rob Riordan, co-founder of High Tech High and president of the \u003ca href=\"http://gse.hightechhigh.org/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High Graduate School of Education\u003c/a>. “The result for students, particularly for lower income families with fewer resources, was that this was the introduction to those networks. They were meeting mentors who were going to recommend them for summer jobs and other opportunities.” The internship helps student build social capital, while feeling like their work has a real world purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>High Tech High emphasizes that, while students should look for an internship in an area of interest, they should also carefully pick a mentor, a key piece of the experience. “It’s not about narrowly predicting what they are going to spend the rest of their life doing,” said Ben Daley, chief academic officer for High Tech High. “It’s much more about the relationship between mentor and student.” Daley tells students to choose a good mentor over what might seem like the perfect experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mentors often get a lot out of the experience as well. The Met gives mentors a brief training on what to expect when working with adolescents and tips for how to explain knowledge they know implicitly clearly to students. “Many of [our mentors] feel like it's the first time someone valued the work,” Battaglia said. “They’re extremely well supported by the students and there’s a real deep human connection.” Teaching someone else who is interested can help bring passion back to the work for many mentors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CHALLENGES OF INTERNSHIPS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Internships take place in real workplaces and students work on real problems in a variety of industries. They offer tremendously diverse experiences to students, but don’t usually align with state standards, a challenge for public schools using this model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s going to be a less-is-more, a deeper focus,” Battaglia said. He’s confident that internship experiences are aligned with Common Core State Standard goals of creating students that can think creatively, problem solve and transfer knowledge. But his advisers also occasionally have trouble explaining to an internship mentor why a particular standard or skill should be incorporated into the experience. Mentors often say the skills aren’t necessary for the work and can become frustrated when seemingly meaningless learning goals are injected into the experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students might also end up in internships for which they are under-qualified. Gavares described the experience of a friend, whose internship at the Salk Institute, was different than hers. That student had no idea what was expected of him on the first day and wasn’t sure he’d be able to live up to expectations. “The way they survived and ended up thriving was learning on site from their mentor and from other professionals on the job,” Gavares said. She noted that mentors often expect that kind of learning curve and it’s actually very realistic. “That’s one of the most exciting parts about the internship -- learning new things that weren’t expected from you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A GROWTHFUL EXPERIENCE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the internship experience is a taste of the real world, a glimpse into various fields of interest and an enticement for what school can help students achieve. But the experience often develops personal growth, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that internships are really, in essence, about an expansion of identity, of incorporating what you couldn’t have done before, and new relationships that you didn’t have before, into your sense of who you are,” said Riordan. “And that’s something that’s a rare commodity in our classrooms, but it’s there in abundance in the internship experiences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teaching through the world of work can be messy. Students in both High Tech High schools and Big Picture schools have been fired from their internships -- a real and often appropriate consequence for various behaviors. Internships also require a lot of communication between students, mentors, and school advisers to make sure the student is getting to participate in real, authentic work, not playing a menial role in an office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They are not 'clean' systems,” said Battaglia. “If you are being responsive to kids and to mentors, you can try to rein it in, but there is always going to be some messiness, which is really healthy, I think.” For school leaders, choosing to incorporate internships takes some comfort with uncertainty and the ability to roll with circumstances as they change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School leaders who have embraced the challenge have seen such positive trends in their high school students that they are considering how to bring similar, real-world experiences to younger students. “We’ve just started to look less at age and more at the capacity to do an internship,” Battaglia said. Some students aren’t ready for an internship experience in middle school, but others are and could benefit from the program. High Tech Middle schools have already seen good results working on real problems in the community as a full class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Very often we mispredict what our young folks are able to do,” Riordan said. “One of the things we’ve learned to do is to understand that a stretch for student is a good thing and that students often respond to that stretch and do things even we weren’t sure they could do.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34381\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/9840470025/sizes/l/\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34381\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/real-world.jpg\" alt=\"real-world\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/real-world.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/real-world-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/real-world-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Katie Gavares spent three weeks in England during her junior year at \u003ca href=\"http://www.hightechhigh.org/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High\u003c/a> in San Diego working with British educators to incorporate project-based learning. It was a mandatory school internship, a standard part of High Tech High’s education program, and it left a lasting impact on her. High Tech High is a network of charter schools devoted to project-based and real-world learning and a leader in the movement to spread tools and tactics to deepen learning nationwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I took away so much from my experience,” Gavares said recently on a \u003ca href=\"http://dlmooc.deeper-learning.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Deeper Learning MOOC\u003c/a> panel dedicated to the opportunities and challenges around internships for middle and high school students. “It’s different to be the lead on an all-day thing, and being in charge of having everyone understand a concept by the end of the day.” Gavares worked for one week with university professors and high school headmasters talking through how school structures had to change to make room for project-based learning. During the second week, she helped teachers develop projects, and in the third week she worked with students as they executed the projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Very often we mispredict what our young folks are able to do... A stretch for a student is a good thing and students often respond to that stretch and do things even we weren’t sure they could do.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“Because I saw such dramatic and quick changes, I felt like I was really getting through to the people I was talking to,” Gavares said. She’s still in touch with many of the educators she met during the internship and even does project-critiques with her teacher-partner in England. She says it was the most memorable experience of high school and helped make her the person she is today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gavares’ passion and excitement about her internship demonstrates the power of allowing students to collaborate with professionals in the real world. As a high school student, she brought expertise to British educators that they valued, and by sharing her deep knowledge of and personal experience with project-based learning from a student perspective, Gavares learned about some of the challenges that well-meaning administrators face too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The stakes were very very high and there was a high degree of uncertainty,” said Elliot Washor, co-founder of \u003ca href=\"http://www.bigpicture.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Big Pictures Schools\u003c/a> and a Deeper Learning MOOC panelist. Big Picture Learning is a non-profit that helps schools redesign systems based on student interests. “What she did had value to herself and to that organization and that made the stakes very high.” Gavares was invested in the project because of her positive experience with project-based learning and she wanted to do a good job for her partners. Her motivation to work hard and succeed were tied to a sense of purpose and the understanding that her work was valued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also gained valuable knowledge about where she’d like to grow in the future. “I’d like to get better at problem-solving,” Gavares said. “There were so many problems because English schools are so structurally different. And in these meetings we would come across the same problems. I was having a hard time not getting pulled down by this one barrier that we were really struggling with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STRUCTURING INTERNSHIPS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Internships are a core part of the education at certain schools, and there are at least two ways to structure internships at this level. High Tech High chooses to send its students on their internships for a three-week chunk of time in either January or June. That model fits their scheduling needs best and it allows teachers to visit students at their sites so they can bring elements of that experiential learning back into the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big Pictures Schools favor a model where students are working with mentors in the field two days a week. The internship is not an isolated experience, but a core part of the pedagogy. “We couldn’t run our school without our mentors,” said Joe Battaglia, Director of Curriculum and Instruction at \u003ca href=\"http://metcenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">The Met,\u003c/a> a Big Picture school in Providence. They’re essential for us.” School administrators encourage the mentors to hold students to the same high standards they’d expect of employees. \"We have an expectation that the work will be high quality and real because it raises the stakes,” Battaglia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students spend a large portion of their week at internship sites, so it’s important that advisers check in with students and mentors and help make connections to school standards. “Our advisers create a specific individual learning plan and set of curriculum for students that are based on standards, but very rarely will it cover all of them,” Battaglia said. “But I also have a bias that I don’t think they’re all covered in a traditional setting either.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Met makes a calculation to cover fewer standards more deeply and to have advisers deeply involved in shaping the experience so that the student gets practice in areas where they have skill gaps. “The point isn’t to be proficient at the specific work of that place, but to learn problem solving, to collaborate, to be able to have a foundation to develop academic investigations,” Battaglia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To help link the internship experience with the classroom, there's plenty of documentation. Students keep a journal about what they’re learning through the internship and often take pictures and videos to chronicle their reflections. “We have structures of rubrics and scales and scaffolds to help them reflect,” Battaglia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SPECIFIC SKILLS AREN'T THE OBJECTIVE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The biggest value of the internship experience is social. “It wasn’t about learning a career or a particular job,” said Rob Riordan, co-founder of High Tech High and president of the \u003ca href=\"http://gse.hightechhigh.org/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High Graduate School of Education\u003c/a>. “The result for students, particularly for lower income families with fewer resources, was that this was the introduction to those networks. They were meeting mentors who were going to recommend them for summer jobs and other opportunities.” The internship helps student build social capital, while feeling like their work has a real world purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>High Tech High emphasizes that, while students should look for an internship in an area of interest, they should also carefully pick a mentor, a key piece of the experience. “It’s not about narrowly predicting what they are going to spend the rest of their life doing,” said Ben Daley, chief academic officer for High Tech High. “It’s much more about the relationship between mentor and student.” Daley tells students to choose a good mentor over what might seem like the perfect experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mentors often get a lot out of the experience as well. The Met gives mentors a brief training on what to expect when working with adolescents and tips for how to explain knowledge they know implicitly clearly to students. “Many of [our mentors] feel like it's the first time someone valued the work,” Battaglia said. “They’re extremely well supported by the students and there’s a real deep human connection.” Teaching someone else who is interested can help bring passion back to the work for many mentors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CHALLENGES OF INTERNSHIPS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Internships take place in real workplaces and students work on real problems in a variety of industries. They offer tremendously diverse experiences to students, but don’t usually align with state standards, a challenge for public schools using this model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s going to be a less-is-more, a deeper focus,” Battaglia said. He’s confident that internship experiences are aligned with Common Core State Standard goals of creating students that can think creatively, problem solve and transfer knowledge. But his advisers also occasionally have trouble explaining to an internship mentor why a particular standard or skill should be incorporated into the experience. Mentors often say the skills aren’t necessary for the work and can become frustrated when seemingly meaningless learning goals are injected into the experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students might also end up in internships for which they are under-qualified. Gavares described the experience of a friend, whose internship at the Salk Institute, was different than hers. That student had no idea what was expected of him on the first day and wasn’t sure he’d be able to live up to expectations. “The way they survived and ended up thriving was learning on site from their mentor and from other professionals on the job,” Gavares said. She noted that mentors often expect that kind of learning curve and it’s actually very realistic. “That’s one of the most exciting parts about the internship -- learning new things that weren’t expected from you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A GROWTHFUL EXPERIENCE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the internship experience is a taste of the real world, a glimpse into various fields of interest and an enticement for what school can help students achieve. But the experience often develops personal growth, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that internships are really, in essence, about an expansion of identity, of incorporating what you couldn’t have done before, and new relationships that you didn’t have before, into your sense of who you are,” said Riordan. “And that’s something that’s a rare commodity in our classrooms, but it’s there in abundance in the internship experiences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teaching through the world of work can be messy. Students in both High Tech High schools and Big Picture schools have been fired from their internships -- a real and often appropriate consequence for various behaviors. Internships also require a lot of communication between students, mentors, and school advisers to make sure the student is getting to participate in real, authentic work, not playing a menial role in an office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They are not 'clean' systems,” said Battaglia. “If you are being responsive to kids and to mentors, you can try to rein it in, but there is always going to be some messiness, which is really healthy, I think.” For school leaders, choosing to incorporate internships takes some comfort with uncertainty and the ability to roll with circumstances as they change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School leaders who have embraced the challenge have seen such positive trends in their high school students that they are considering how to bring similar, real-world experiences to younger students. “We’ve just started to look less at age and more at the capacity to do an internship,” Battaglia said. Some students aren’t ready for an internship experience in middle school, but others are and could benefit from the program. High Tech Middle schools have already seen good results working on real problems in the community as a full class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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}
},
"baycurious": {
"id": "baycurious",
"title": "Bay Curious",
"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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"order": 3
},
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},
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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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"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/global-news-podcast/id135067274?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/BBC-World-Service-p455581/",
"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"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",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
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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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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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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",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
"link": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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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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},
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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": {
"site": "news",
"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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"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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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "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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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
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"id": "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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"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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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"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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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"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.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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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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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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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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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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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/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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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)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"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",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
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