Solutions-focused therapy suggests that “that there are exceptions to every problem and that those exceptions, once identified, can be carefully analyzed.”

How does it work? First, a problem is identified and “patients learn to focus on the the first hints of a miracle.” Not something grand or unattainable in the moment, just something small. “What is going well?” Second, they are introduced with the “Exception Question: When was the last time you saw a little bit of this miracle even for a short time?”

So, today I got to put this practice to the test. A co-worker walked into my office, feeling anxious and upset about her workload. On a whim, I asked her to sit down and close her eyes. (The second part I added for fun. I closed mine as well. Later, I felt very thankful that no parents walked in.)

I asked her first how she was feeling. Then I asked her how she would feel if she went back to her office after lunch and all of her stress and anxiety was gone. She shared what that would look and feel like (she would be breathing more slowly, she would be smiling, she would not be worried or bothered by interruptions). Then, I asked her about the last time she was working on the same task she was working on in the moment and did not feel anxious. She shared about all of the surrounding details in that experience (mostly she talked about weather, sleep, and her feeling of calm). I asked her how she would have responded on the happy day if a coworker or a student interrupted her work time (if that task was not urgent, she would ask them to return in 30 minutes and if it was, she would happily help them in the moment). Then, we opened our eyes and I suggested she try to recreate that environment to the best of her ability in her office. I thought she was going to laugh at the ridiculousness of the experience, but rather she smiled and said she felt a lot more calm. Her initial reaction was to ask if I had seen a therapist and wanted to know where I learned about this strategy. After a few more guesses on her part, I revealed that it was a grad school reading.

Anecdote aside, I have to say that I was pretty moved by the idea of looking to the positive and attempting to recreate the surrounding feelings. Don’t look for the people who are doing things wrong; look for those who are doing things right and rattempt to replicate their work. My take home message here: “big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions.” Think small.

However, it is important to ask what the goals of such a change would be, to really questions whether these goals would be achieved, and to also consider possible consequences associated with a shift to a merit-based pay system.

The most obvious goal: Teachers work harder, performance (both of teacher and students) is increased.

Teachers already work hard (and not because they are being paid a lot). They come to work on the weekends, stay late, and often devote vacation time to perfecting their practices, because they are committed to their students and because they want to be great at what they do. If working just a little harder were all it would take to improve students’ success in class, teachers would already be doing it.

Actual outcome: teachers are tired and frustrated and student performance is not affected (at least dramatically).

There is no evidence to prove that financial rewards actually improve productivity. Dan Pink, in his talk On Motivation, shows that financial incentives actually narrow people’s focus and limit their possibility with regards to problem solving. So, it is possible that a system of merit-based pay might even have the opposite affect of what was intended.

Other possible outcomes:

1. School culture affected

One of my favorite things about working for HTH is the supportive and loving culture you see at all the schools. Teachers share their work, observe classrooms, tune projects, give feedback, and care for each other. In addition,

At schools like ours, I think that a system of merit-based pay would seriously change this culture. Currently teachers are competitive… with themselves. Based upon the work they see from their colleagues, they push themselves to be better. Though it would be possible (with merit-based pay) for everyone to excel, and thus get paid more, it would also be likely that teachers would begin to feel competitive with each other, ultimately stifling the collaborative atmosphere.

Rather than pushing all teachers toward excellence and leaving the “successful” teachers feeling rewarded, it is more likely that the amount of money offered would “not (be) enough to mean much to those who got it, but enough to irk those who didn’t.” (Toch, 2009).

2. Impact on quality of education

From “Is Merit Pay the Answer?” Luis Diaz points out that “standardized tests in many states don’t put enough emphasis on writing and critical thinking, so raising the stakes for teachers creates an incentive to shortchange these important life skills.” The students who graduate from our schools (in comparison to many other schools) are passionate, creative, thoughtful, critical thinkers. They are able to collaborate with others on important projects and know how to revise their work during this process. Standardized tests cannot capture these traits.

Because merit-based pay does not necessarily require that the “merit” is measured by standardized test scores, I would also be interested to hear of schools who have found a way to rate teachers’ merit using an alternate approach. In the meantime, I would be very reluctant to move toward a system such as this in and school and especially in schools like ours.

What most people are not talking about, however, is that we were in bad shape even before the recession began. Though I hear a lot of talk about this problem, I don’t feel like people are angry enough about this. From the California Educational Opportunity Report (January, 2010):

• “Even before the current recession began California ranked 46th of all states in per-pupil expenditures.” (California spent less than $2393 less per students than the national average prior to the recession
• California spent 77% of the national average for each student and roughly half for each student of Vermont and Rhode Island.
• The average secondary teacher in California serves almost twice as many students as the average secondary teacher across the nation.”

So, given that we started in a situation where things did not look good, how thin can we spread ourselves before we impact students’ educations in a lasting way?

What is being cut?
- The number of teachers in each school (leading to larger class sizes).
- Health, psychological, and social services
- Funds for supplies (paper, books, materials, etc…)
- “Extra” programs: art, music, trips, etc…
- Support programs: support staff, summer school
- Professional development

What does this mean?

- Fewer college-going students
- Ill-prepared/supported teachers
- An further increase in the performance gap between students of low and high income
- Likely, an increase in serious mental health issues (for some students), potentially suicide, pregnancy, etc..

For the first time since I started teaching I feel pretty scared about where education in our state is heading. Where does the line get drawn? At what point to teachers become babysitters? When we move past this recession, what can/will be done in the state of California to close this funding gap?

Why multipurpose spaces?

Nair talks about the 4 types of learning that needs to be balanced in a student’s (or anyone’s) learning experience.
1. Campfire (lecture)
2. Watering hole (group discussion)
3. Cave (in your own head, car, shower)
4. Life.

Though #3 and #4 can happen anywhere, many schools are not adaptable, such that #1 and #2 can happen back to back in a classroom. Most schools are set up so that students can learn in a lecture format, but cannot then break out into small groups to talk about what they have learned. Without this kind of dialogue, group-work, or collaboration, it will be very unlikely that students will take what they’ve learned into their “cave” and then, later, apply it to life.

But, many teachers might ask, won’t wasting time in small groups doing projects, group-work, etc.,  keep us from really covering all of the standards necessary to prepare students for the next grade, life, etc…? Nair quotes David Orr when he says that “The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but of one’s self.” So much of the reason that many schools/classrooms are designed they way they are is because they are set up to teach in the lecture-heavy, drill and kill format. These people have failed to recognize that being passionate about learning and about certain subject matters is far more important than having a a very vague understanding of every possible topic in a school textbook. Get students moving around. I love the quote he took from the New York Times:”Talent is overrated”. Students who are successful are not necessarily the ones who score high on standardized tests. IQ may not be that important either. In fact it only “accounts for 4-10% of career success.” Students who are successful are those who have developed a love for learning.

Though I am not in the process of opening a new school or thinking about building design for a new building, this video has got me thinking about ways I can make my current school more adaptive and to allow for more creativity. As always, I am thinking about the outdoor space at our school and creaive ways we can give students room to run around and play. Gerber?

A few things I find interesting/concerning:

1. “23% of parents of public school children gave the nation’s schools a grade of A or B, but when asked to grade the schools their own children attended 64% gave grades of A or B.” The author goes on to say that over 2/3 of those polled said that their neighborhood schools placed more of an emphasis on academic achievement, have stronger discipline and less violence, have stronger race relations, suffer fewer dropouts, send more students to college, and do so with less money to spend than other schools.

- This is not surprising. There seems to be a culture of fear and gossip (and, hence, all this anecdotal evidence) about what is happening in schools. At the end of the day, parents are satisfied, it seems, with the kind of education their child is receiving, just not everyone else’s children.

2. “A child, no matter how disadvantaged, who attends a school mainly populated by privileged children may, other things being equal, do better in school than an advantaged student who attends a school populated mainly by children who are less well endowed with ‘social capital.’”

- I love that our school has created a diverse mix of students where disadvantaged students are able to benefit from the “social capital” of others. However, the reason this worries me is because I am often asked, “Do you think you would see the results you do at HTH in a school with all low-income children?” I always say yes (though usually only partially confident with my answer). I would hate to think that a PBL environment where teachers are passionate and students love school could only happen in a school where there are at least some “advantaged” children. I don’t think that this quote suggests that it is impossible, merely much more difficult.

3. “In academic testing, rarely is this kind of information about the relative importance of different skills obtainable.”

- We test and retest students, compare them, worry them, worry teachers, and cause alarm. Most people have not even seen the tests students take and yet are concerned when their child does not do as well as another. The bottom line is, how do we even know that the skills being tested are important? What skills are important for a child’s success in college and beyond and how do we test for those?

Different schools define effective teaching in very different ways. Some schools measure good teaching by looking at standardized test scores, others look at college acceptance rates, while some might use completely different criteria. Given this variety (and knowing that most schools use the former type of measure) I would be worried about the shift we would see in grad programs if their aim was to help teachers improve their students’ standardized test scores. Ultimately, we need to find a better way of assessing learning and effective instruction using a tool other than standardized test scores. When I think about what that would look like at our school I think about students’ ability to think critically, to reflect and improve, to produce high quality work, and to collaborate. How do we measure these things and where/how does the change in teacher compensation begin?

As I have started to think about how to look at and talk about data at my school, I have also thought a lot about how to open an honest, meaningful conversation about test scores and other data without sending the message that we are not going to let test scores dictate how we teach. I appreciated the reminder in Data Wise that “the criterion to apply as you prepare students for such a test is whether you believe the preparation will create general improvement or merely improve performance on the specific test.” The real question is not: how can we  improve our test scores, but: how can we improve learning for all students. “If students are gaining mastery, then the improvement will show up in many different places — on other tests they take or in the quality of their later academic work — not just in their scores on their own state’s test.”

Next steps:

Step 1. Format data about our school and our students in a format that is easy to understand and will lend itself to conversation (and maybe even disagreement) between teachers. “The real value in looking at data is not that it provides answers, but that it inspires questions.” Identifying a few key questions about how we are teaching and how our students are learning seems like a great first step.

Step 2: “Allow teachers to experience and discuss the actual test.” Yes! I think it is important to at least understand what it is that our students are experiencing for an entire week out of the year and see if there are some quick and easy ways we can help them out.

Step 3: Empowering the teachers. “The first step in articulating a problem of practice is to establish a link between learning and teaching. It can be easy to forget that teaching matters for learning. If teachers don’t fundamentally believe that their teaching can make a difference for student learning, then it’s going to be difficult to convince them to change their teaching.” Sometimes teachers get into a rut. Sometimes they use a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching. Sometimes, when overhwhelmed by grading and planning and all of their other responsibilities, I think that some teachers forget that they are their students only math/science or humanities teacher and what they do (or don’t do) makes a big difference in what and how students learn. I think it is important every now and then to remind teachers of the link between their teaching and their students’ learning.

Step 4: Identify our next steps as a school and as teachers. “The primary focus has to be what we can control over — what happens at school. What we can do is teach well.” What kinds of professional development will help teachers better

Step 5: Examining instruction. Though we already have a collegial coaching plan in place at our school, I like the idea (from Data Wise in Action) of having small teams of teachers observe each other, identify goals, and then revisit the observed teacher’s classroom to see how specific suggestions have worked. I also like the idea of modeling observation and critique with a veteran teacher. It helps new teachers to realize that even great teachers make mistakes and allows for proper modeling of feedback and critique. I think it is also a good idea to allow the teacher being observed to choose the time of the visit, outline what the observers will see, and pose her own questions to the observers. I think it makes the visits more producive and also helps set up a feeling of safety. No teacher wants to feel like people are observing her classroom to pick out all of the things she is doing wrong. And most teacher also don’t like to feel like they are being surprised by a classroom observation.

“In the least healthy organizations, you can expect to hear low-order grumbles — complaints about working conditions. For example: ‘It’s too hot in here.’ Or, ‘I don’t get paid enough.’ But in a very healthy organization, there would be “metagrumbles” — complaints having to do with the needs of self-actualization: ‘I don’t feel that my talents are being fully utilized.’ Or, ‘I don’t feel that I ‘m in on things enough around here.’”

Naturally, this led me to think about our organization. What do people complain about at HTH? The question is well-timed as I have been thinking, anyway, about supporting teachers and about the complaints they have and the supports they find useful.

New teachers complain about feeling overwhelmed and feeling like they do not have enough time to get everything they they would like accomplished. They find it difficult to maintain a work-life balance. Though I have surveyed fewer “veteran” teachers about their experience, I know that many of them feel similarly. It sounds like these are low- or mid-level grumbles. But, I consider HTH a pretty healthy organization. I wonder if the author would say there is a difference between grumbles that you overhear in the workplace and issues that arise specifically when you ask employees to talk about their experience.

I also wonder if the structure of our organization weeds out some of the meta-grumbles. With our hiring process, we do a pretty good job of selecting talented, motivated teachers and then giving them creative freedom to put those talents to use. And, as we have small staffs where we empower employees, teachers quickly learn that if there is something they would like to get done (and something about which they are also passionate), they should take leadership and do it themselves.  These structures (along with our one-year contracts, which do not keep unmotivated teachers around for very long) do not leave a lot of room for people to complain about being under-utilized at a school like ours.

This quote really struck me because of its emphasis on the correlation between good teaching and high achievement from students, specifically of poor students and/or students of color. Obviously, most teachers really want their students to do well and to make progress in class, and I feel fortunate to work at a school where teachers are united around this same goal. However, I do think there is often a tendency at the beginning of (and throughout) the year for teachers to make comments about whether or not they have a “good” class or a “difficult” class. Though the behavior of the children can make a difference in what a typical day in class looks like, it is ultimately the teacher’s responsibility to help these children be successful. It is a heavy concept to really sit down and say, “what I am doing in this room with these students and the quality of my teaching will have an impact on what they learn and, more importantly, how they think about learning”. On the contrary, it is a really powerful feeling to look at a group of students who are, perhaps, a “difficult” group and think “this is going to be tough, but I can make this happen.” Ultimately, though, I think the important take home message is that good intentions are not enough. Even the best teachers need to be reflective, need to work at keeping their teaching practice fresh and exciting, and most importantly need to constantly be reminding themselves that their students are capable.

Sometimes you don’t realize that a project you’ve done or a lesson you’ve taught didn’t have the intended results until too late. How, as teachers and administrators, do we course correct when we realize that, though our intentions are great, our project or lesson is not as effective as we’d like?

This quote definitely provided an Aha! moment for me in my thoughts about how to best support new teachers. I know many teachers who find it frustrating when they are told (repeatedly) how to teach their class by parents who have never, themselves, been teachers. Just because you have been a student (maybe even a great one) does not mean you know how to be an effective teacher. So then, it seems the opposite would be true. People who have taught, and who do know what it means to be an effective teacher, are better fit to give advice to those new (or perhaps even veteran) to the world of teaching. I don’t think this is always true (in fact, I am pretty sure it isn’t).

Why do we, as teachers, spend so much time thinking about how to encourage our students to be critical thinkers and problem solvers, how to be successful without us “giving them the answer”, and then instinctively do the opposite when it comes to supporting adults? Why do we have the tendency, when visiting other classrooms, to first notice faults of the teacher and then think of ways to pass the “right way of doing things” on to them. How can we better model “good teaching” practices when we are no longer teaching students, but rather mentoring adults?