Meaningful Routines: The Key to Sustained Student Growth

I've been thinking about and talking with my colleagues and friends about the importance of meaningful routines and their roles and purposes for teachers and students. For clarity, let's dispense with any misconceptions. I am not talking about taking roll, collecting papers, distributing materials, though these are important aspects of classroom management. What I want to explore is how teachers can create regular, flexible, and repeated tasks that increase knowledge, understanding, and skills, while simultaneously evolving in complexity, perspective, or difficulty over time. These types of routines offer teachers the ability to scaffold learning, use time effectively, and establish regular and predictable avenues of activity and feedback, all of which are sound pedagogical practices. Examples of meaningful routines fall into several categories, or types, including:

• routines that build discrete skills (fluency, spelling patterns, phonemic awareness)
• routines that foster meta-cognition/reflective and/or critical thinking (journals, group discussions, Socratic circles, blogging)
• routines that promote connections, ideas, comparisons and insight (essential questions, graphic organizers, chat rooms)
• routines that promote social interactions and expand perspectives (cooperative groups, literature circles, role-playing, wikkis)
• routines that require the use of a specific strategy (Questioning the Author, sorting, summarizing, graphic representation of texts)

In reality, a good routine may have many of the above characteristics. Regardless of the type of routine, the key word is meaningful: that which creates meaning. To be meaningful students have to learn about new ideas or concepts, process and/or evaluate this information, and apply the newly learned material in new contexts. The essential questions about meaningful routines are, then:

• What do meaningful routines look like in the classroom?
• How do they help students grow and make meaning?
• What is the teacher's role?
• How do meaningful routines remain meaningful, or vital?
• What are some examples of meaningful routines?
• How do meaningful routines fit in with planning?
• How do we assess our students' growth with regard to meaningful routines?

I think the best way to answer these questions is to take a look at a concrete example of a meaningful routine, one that I have used in the classroom. As a classroom teacher, one constant challenge is to get students to examine anything, be it literature, a scientific concept, or a historical event, in depth, and, moreover, with an eye toward subtleties and details. One way I motivated students to look at literature in this manner was to use a literary response journal. One version I used was to ask students to: 1) read a piece of text carefully 2) identify and excerpt a piece of text that resonated with them and correlated in some manner with current or recent class discussions and lessons 3) comment on the piece of text in a way that reveals new/and/or sophisticated insight into the text. Through modeling of the kinds of desired responses and sharing in small groups and in whole-class discussion, as well as through individual and written feedback, students gave increasingly sophisticated and nuanced responses. Because they practiced this task on a regular basis, students became comfortable with the format and more focused on the quality of entries, which helped them create meaning. Moreover, in order for this to not become a static process, I had to infuse the experience with novelty, depth, and complexity. My role, then, was to: provide a variety of insightful responses to be used as a models; use literature that was challenging, captivating, and relevant; ask thought-provoking questions; require responses that went beyond the text and fostered thematic connections; and create activities that helped students apply the ideas from the journals (compositions, enactments, speeches). Routines are also a boon for teachers when it comes to planning. They become a flexible template upon which we hang our ideas and activities. While highly flexible, they also allow for a comforting degree of predictability for teacher and students. Furthermore, having meaningful routines allowed me to identify what my weaknesses were and to address them more systematically. Assessment also became more meaningful because I was able to assess students on more than one level. Pedagogically, I ensured my routines built in specific academic skills that had to be mastered. Simultaneously, I was able to get feedback on a meta-cognitive dimension. In other words, I could assess how students were learning, what their roadblocks were, and what they needed help on in terms of process of procedure. This made it easier, though not necessarily easy, to help them with their learning. Academic routines, when based on best practices that embed strategies and skills, are the single best tool a teacher has to raise achievement and foster understanding.

Peace

gman

Incoherency: The Fatal Blow to Education

I won't pretend I know all of the answers to all the problems in public education, but I can say with certainty that there is one overarching problem, with an obvious solution: a lack of coherency, both at the state, district, and campus levels have rendered our schools ineffective and inefficient. Put simply, schools are bogged down in a morass of initiatives, programs, and goals, many of which are moderately effective at best and counterproductive at worst. Teachers find themselves beset by a host of imperatives, all of which must be accomplished, all of which take precedence, to the point that none can take precedence! Moreover, many initiatives or programs conflict with each other in their directions, approaches, and objectives. And complicating matters further is the fact that any teacher, no matter how accomplished , effective, or efficient, has only a certain amount of time to accomplish the myriad of tasks, many of which are inherent in teaching, others not so much. Choose your cliché: there are just some many balls teachers can keep up in the air without letting them drop, or so many irons they can keep in the fire without letting some melt. Either way, teachers end up losing momentum, and if bombarded enough times, will develop a "wait it out attitude." The feeling among many teachers is that this (program, initiative, etc.) will pass if we just outlast it. This is not to say that initiatives or programs or inherently wrong; this would miss the point completely. There are many worthwhile approaches to improving education. In fact, we have any array of options to choose from, all of which have benefits and drawbacks. What I am saying is that less is more, and that schools need to take stock of what they already have actually going on their campuses before layering another goal or monumental task. To do this, a set of essential questions should be asked in an open and honest manner. These include: 1. What programs/initiatives do we have in place? Are we actually doing them? If not, why not? 2. Are any of these programs/initiatives ineffective or ill-suited to our student population? If so, how can we adapt or change them? 3. Is there great resistance to our programs/initiatives? If so, why? Which barriers can be removed? Which cannot? 4. Is each person performing a role he or she is comfortable with or equipped to do? If not, how can administration and colleagues address this? 5. Are there just simply too may programs/initiatives to sustain? Which can be eliminated so others can be supported or bolstered? 6. Are any of the programs/initiatives conflicting with another? If so, how can this issue be addressed?

These are surely not the only questions to ask, but they provide a starting point, as many connected questions and issues will surface as a result of frank discussions. I invite all educators and administrators to complete the one task that will start the ball rolling toward real change: take an inventory of programs and initiatives on your campus. You might be surprised by the results.

Empathy is a Conversation Away

We are a society in the grips of an existential and ontological crisis. On a daily basis, our consciousness is assaulted by an unrelenting cascade of often disturbing and contradictory information, messages, and images. Unmoored from long-standing traditions and hierarchies that gave us meaning, structure, and direction, we are floating in the proverbial ether of a fluid, rapidly evolving social biome. The industrial revolution that brought us factories, standardized processes, and predictability have given way to a technological revolution that has disrupted our business models, transformed communications, and challenged the very notion of self and collective identity. We have become cyberknights, wielding laptops, iPads, and the ubiquitous smartphone like rapiers, slashing our way through the virtual environs of modern life. But all of this techothink has come at a great cost, often in ironic ways. We swim in a sea of connectivity while simultaneously drowning in in an ocean of isolation. With a few clicks, we can amass information about almost any topic, but our well of wisdom is dryer than ever. We decry social injustices with massive protests, even as we savage each other on social media. And though we have access to a slew of designer medications, the cumulative toll of stress has rendered us psychologically bloodied and emotionally bedraggled. As the writer and poet Munia Khan puts it “A smartphone is an addictive device which traps a soul into a lifeless planet full of lives.” But make no mistake. Our problems with cell phones and technology are merely a symptom of a larger, furtive, encrypted disease: As we become atomized by the world we struggle to find connections to, we simply just don’t know how to be fully human anymore. On an even more fundamental level, and much to the chagrin of Paul McCartney, we no longer know how to just “let it be.” At the end of the day, what we crave is connection, and for this connection to happen, we need empathy. Psychologist have often pointed out that in order to be a fully-functioning adult, we need to learn to delay gratification. Aristotle wrote about the need to be able to distinguish between temporary pleasure and long-lasting joy. Wisdom to be sure. Yet, a sort of dry wisdom as it relates to the modern human condition, for we need our hearts as well as our minds to feel fully alive. And to fill our hearts we need other people. And only empathy, the ability to peer deeply into the soul of another person until it merges with your consciousness, will allow this to happen. Without empathy, we will forever see others as separate beings rather than comingled threads in the fabric of our connected existence. The author and spiritual guru Eckhart Tolle captures this sentiment clearly and powerfully in his metaphysical manual, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment: “The bond that connects you with that person [you love] is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.” And though this task of reconnecting with others seems daunting, take heart. It’s as simple as having a conversation and actually listening to another person’s story. You may find that not only are you more emotionally enriched than before your encounter, but that you have learned something telling and deeper about yourself in the process. As Alanis Morissette puts it in her aptly titled son, Empathy, “Thank you for seeing me/I feel so less lonely/Thank you…

Education and the Replication Crises: A Clear and Present Danger

We are fond of niche words and phrases in Education. Differentiation,student-centered learning,individualized instruction, learning styles, and the one that sends shivers down the spines of many teachers, data-driven decision making. But there are hard questions that we either do not bother asking, or gloss over when asked. What do we mean by differentiation? Do learning styles matter, and if so, to what degree? Is individualized instruction possible, and if so, why bother having a curriculum? What data are we looking at, and what percentage of our time is taken up by crunching these numbers rather than preparing for a quality lesson? Whether we want to admit or not, education is vulnerable to the replication crisis, a phenomenon which casts doubt upon the inability to replicate experimental findings.

This is particularly acute in the area of social sciences, the domain from which education often draws its data, and more importantly, its conclusions. As Shravan Vasishth, a professor of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics at the Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany points out, “…interpreting such data requires statistical inference, and this is where experimental science has always struggled, especially in medicine and the humanities.” In fact, according to Matthew Makel, a gifted-education research specialist at Duke University, and Jonathan Plucker, a professor of educational psychology and cognitive science at Indiana University, a scant 0.13 percent of education articles published in the field’s top 100 journals are replications of studies. Let that sink in for a moment. We are basing our pedagogical decisions, which directly approximately 4 million teachers and more than 50 million students, on unproven ideas. If this weakness were applied to the design and construction of new bridges, disaster would be the end result! 

 And yet, year after year, school systems cling to unproven, specious research studies as if they were the holy grail of positive change. As educator and researcher Timothy Shanahan states, “We tend to chase fads. Instead of building on past reforms and improvements we instead ride the pendulum back and forth.” 

But perhaps the answer is not found directly in the field of education. Jim Collins, renowned business consultant and best-selling author of the book Good to Great warns us that the key to growth and success is not always something shiny and new, but rather a combination of "simplicity and diligence" applied in a consistent, unrelenting manner. Drawing from Collins’ work and the seminal research of education expert Michael Fullan and other heavy hitters in the fields of education and psychology, author and consultant Mike Schmoker distills educational success into three essential, uncompromising words: simplicity, clarity, and priority. Schmoker uses a combination of research, logic, and common sense to prove that without these three principles of design and action, schools are fated to make the same unproductive mistakes over and over again. When things are not simple enough that they are not actually practical and “doable,” no one should be surprised when they don’t materialize, warns Schmoker. 

In a parallel fashion, when goals, systems, and methodologies are lack clarity, confusion abounds, leading to repeated unproductive struggle and negativity. And, when schools fail to set realistic priorities and instead try to do everything well, the end result is frustration, and ultimately failure. As the old adage goes, “when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.” Isn’t it time that education recognizes they are not immune to the replication crisis? Isn’t it time to honor common sense via the principles of simplicity, clarity, and priority? These are questions that can no longer be avoided.

Most Pressing Issues in Public Education

Okay...let's get down to it. Yes, public education in the United States has become a quagmire of problems and is mired, manipulated and constrained by a number of forces, some with kids' best interests at heart, others not so much. Our children are falling through the cracks, and we all know it. But the real crime is that we actually have the knowledge and the ability to turn these issues around, to make a significant, positive, and lasting impact on the future of our youth.



Over the next several postings, I intend to explore a number of issues that are undermining our schools. Some of these are applicable across the content areas; others specifically target literacy/language arts. Some upcoming themes include:

• lack of coherency in schools


• lack of true empowerment of educators and principals


• the importance of long-range planning


• the need to establish meaningful, strategy/skills based routines

I look forward to earnest and honest replies and wish others to join me in a much needed and overdue revolution.

Peace and hope,

Gary