FOCUS

WOW. I just finished my second reading of one of my favorite professional books, Focus, by Mike Schmoker.  Published in 2011 by ASCD, I first read this book in 2012 while principal at an elementary campus.  Reading it for the second time three years later as a middle school principal, I can recognize my own personal growth in my beliefs about how to improve student learning for all students.  While I want to stand up and applaud during some parts of this book, there are other parts that challenge my thinking and make me question how we have traditionally approached learning for all students.

Throughout this book, Schmoker drives home his belief that we have way too many standards in our core content areas (English, Social Studies/History, Science and Math) to be able to teach them all effectively.  We have to systematically reduce the number of standards we teach, as Marzano also suggests, so that we can go deeper into the most essential standards and increase our effectiveness as educators.  I can't say I disagree with this.  

Further, Schmoker references 21st Century Thinker, David Conley's, four "standards of success" or "habits of mind"that we should be teaching our students within and among all four core content areas at minimum.  These "habits of mind," (the description I prefer), can be found on page 38 of Focus:

• Read to infer/interpret/draw conclusions.
• Support arguments with evidence.
• Resolve conflicting views encountered in source documents.
• Solve complex problems with no obvious answer.

It is our responsibility to make sure our students are college or career ready by the time they leave high school.  This is not the sole responsibility of your local high school.  This is a challenge that can be met if we work together, K-12, with a vertically aligned focus.  Think about it.  If the basis of our curriculum and what we expect our students to know and be able to do was grounded in the four habits of mind described above, students would be increasing the amount and quality of writing they are producing each year.  

Our students deserve the opportunity to wrestle with, discuss, defend, challenge and solve problems.  In order to be college ready, they need to be doing this regularly (Schmoker would say 2-3 times per week.) and in all disciplines.  

There are many different educational leaders and programs out there that tell you how to structure an effective lesson, and although the terms may change slightly, they can all be boiled down to the following elements:  

1. a clear learning objective with which the teacher either creates interest in the topic or provides background information,
2. direct teaching and modeling by the teacher, 
3. guided practice/checks for understanding which is commonly known as formative assessment, 
4. independent practice or assessment, depending on where you are in the teaching and learning cycle.  

Schmoker makes several points of which I want to give a standing ovation:

• Any teacher talk/lecture should be interactive.  Students should be taught how to take notes and annotate during a lecture.  This has to be directly taught.  We cannot assume students know how to do this at any grade level.  (Cornell notes are a great tool to teach this!)
• No more than 7-10 minutes should pass before students are given an opportunity to discuss or interact with the content presented.  During this time, the teacher should be checking for understanding (formative assessment).  This can look a variety of ways, including but not limited to:
• Moving about the room, listening in and observing as students work and/or discuss in pairs.
• Calling on a random sampling of students between each step/chunk of content.  This does not mean calling solely on students who raise their hands.
• Having students show a red/green/yellow popsicle stick or cup or even using a thumbs up or down to signal their level of understanding.
• Using dry erase boards for students to write responses and hold up to show the teacher.
• Guided practice and checking for understanding should happen multiple times during a lesson.  Gone are the days of a teacher talking to the students from bell to bell with little to no interaction with or from the students followed up by assigning independent practice for homework.  

These ideas are not new, but they are sound, best practices; yet, why do we not see these strategies in more classrooms?  You may be thinking, "why?" Why should I change my practice?  Consider this:  The research shows that frequently checking for understanding during your lessons and using formative assessment effectively can have lasting results that make an impact, including:

• 20-30 times as much positive impact on learning than the most popular current initiatives.
• 10 times as cost-effective as reducing class size.
• Adding 6-9 months of additional learning growth per year.
• Accounting for as much as 400 % "speed of learning differences;" students would learn four times as fast as a result of its consistent use.

This is why the first word of this post was "Wow." We cannot ignore this research.  The single most important factor in a classroom is the teacher.  No parent ever calls, emails or  meets with me, or I would propose any administrator across the nation, to request a mediocre teacher.  Every parent wants their child to have a highly effective teacher, and every students deserves just that.  Only three years of effective teaching will catapult students in the lowest quartiles into the third or even fourth quartile.

Wow.  The time to act is now.  If not now, when?  If not you, then who?

~Megan