The procrastination equation: Putting research into practice at the Depot

They were discussing different forms of government, and the conversation had degenerated into a frustrating chorus of "There is no right answer. It's all just a matter of opinion."

"That's not true," I said, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. "There are benchmarks. Some forms of government work better than others."

I'm not sure they got my point, but that kind of relativism is one of my pet peeves. Unfortunately, it infects many parts of society, including education. People in education often think that there are no real answers--no reference points by which to judge between the myriad of models and practices that promise to improve student success. But that's not true. Research has shown what works. The same science that brought us modern medicine and discovered global warming can help us educate our kids, and if we're not using it, we're fighting this battle blindfolded. Here's the story of how we're putting research into practice at the Depot, and how it's impacting our kids.

Last year was my first year at this little non-traditional school, and it soon became obvious that motivation was a serious problem. Motivation was low, engagement was low, attendance was low, task completion was low, and procrastination was high. Then I came across this article on procrastination from psychologist, Piers Steel. It was a thorough review of research related to motivation, and his "procrastination equation" became my guide. I took the liberty here to make it a bit more user friendly:

Utility is "how desirable a task or choice is for an individual." Expectancy is whether we think we will be able to complete the task, value is how much we value the outcome, the more impulsive among us will have a greater tendency to procrastinate, and the further away the deadline (the greater the delay), the more we'll put off the work.

Using the equation is simple. If utility is low, we procrastinate. To decrease procrastination, we need to increase expectancy and value and decrease impulsivity and delay. At the Depot this year, we're attacking all four factors of the equation.

Expectancy: According to Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura, "efficacy expectancy is somewhat susceptible to verbal persuasion and emotional arousal but is especially influenced by modelling and actual performance accomplishments." With this in mind, we are increasing our use of explicit instruction at the Depot, and our new Project Block is designed to provide students with a string of small successes to build upon. As of last week, about 60% of our students had completed 8 science projects, including hands-on projects, lab reports and a research paper, and had begun their first independent project.

Focused work during Project Block

The ALEKS online math system, which we also started using this year, is another way we're building self-efficacy. It offers a mastery-based approach the kids love, and our students' average progress on their courses is 54%.

And finally, we've really ramped up the 1:1 support this year. With a combination of interns and an instructional assistant, we are able to assign struggling students one-on-one help during ALEKS, Project Block, and any other time they need it.

Value: Dr. Steel points to classical conditioning as one way to increase the value factor. During our summer program, we were having trouble getting kids to do their online math work, so I was tossing around the idea of a token-based incentive system with Ellen. I had planned to make the tokens worth credits. "But what if they don't care about credits?," she asked. 

She was right. Many of our students don't seem to be motivated by threats of credit loss or offers of credit. So what did we do? We still offered credit, but we also tied the tokens to a field trip reward, and it worked. They really valued that reward!

We carried that same approach over into this year: Students earn poker chips for on-task behavior, and if they earn enough, they qualify for special field trips. Many students use our new progress tracking system to keep track of their chips and they value them so much that their anxiety about the chips has actually become a bit of a problem. My hope is that this system will build the habits of work that we adults call intrinsic motivation. According to Steel, this is exactly what happens--students associate reward with the work, and the work becomes intrinsically rewarding.

(Of course, they don't always succeed. The other day, I told a student he would not have enough chips to qualify for the field trip the next day. He pushed his few chips away on the table as if to disavow them and said, "I don't want any more chips!" His protest reminded me of my son when he was young. He wouldn't eat his Thanksgiving dinner, and the consequence was not getting any pie. "I don't like pie!," he repeated, as he marched around the table. The fact that chips can tap into their emotion is testimony that we've tapped into the value factor.)

Impulsivity:  Impulsivity is considered a personality trait, and Steel questions whether we can influence it much, but he does suggest two possibilities: stimulus control and automaticity. "Stimulus control," says Steel, "helps to direct behavior by indicating what is appropriate (i.e., rewarding) under any given circumstance," and I think the chips serve this purpose also. If students stay off their phones and on-task for 10, 15, or 20 minutes (we gradually increase the blocks of time), they receive reward chips. Most students earn the full amount of chips available during ALEKS Block and Project Block, and it's surprising to see how easily most of them can focus for 20 solid minutes under these conditions.

To increase automaticity, Steel recommends schedules and routines. This year we've implemented a new blocked schedule at the Depot, but there's more we could do with routines within the blocks themselves. Interestingly, Steel also mentions reducing choice as a means of helping those with high impulsivity. I think the blocked schedule has also helped here, especially the replacement of "self-directed learning time" with Project Block, but I'm still chewing on this one.

We've also added another research-based strategy to the mix to try to address the impulsivity factor--one that Steel didn't mention. Stephen, one of our teachers, has been teaching mindfulness during morning pick-me-up since the beginning of the year. They've gone over several techniques, from focusing on the breath to mindful eating, and they had a great time identifying thoughts and feeling invoked by popular songs the other day. Several students have said they have started to practice meditation on their own. Our hope is that this will help them not only manage stress but also increase focus.

Delay: Our new progress tracking system is designed to give students continuous, rapid feedback about their progress, and the timed chip blocks have provided small chunked goals for the students, but I think we can help students a lot more with handling delays. My goal for the second semester is to explicitly teach the students two methods of time/project management, and then reward them for each box checked off their to-do lists. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Brott Beese, a Ph.D. student from Purdue who spent some time studying our program, for pointing me in this direction.)

That is how we're using science to help our students. That's our goal, anyway, and so far it seems to be working. Engagement is up, attendance is up, and even task completion seems to be up. I was so excited to find Steel's article last year. It has provided a framework--a science-based guide for improving our program. So often in education, we bounce from one model to another, often without much confidence that any of it will work. But there's no need for that. There is a research base in psychology and education that we can use and build on. We're not blind, we don't stumble in the dark, and we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can't afford to. Time is precious for every one of our students.

We need a new narrative

Tristan showing off the urn he made at his internship.

What is the Depot? According to one of our students, it's "a place where you go and come back with blue hair and piercings."

That's an interesting description, and it has a grain of truth to it. At least 25% of our students have had colored hair at some point this year. But it is also false. Many of them already had it when they came, and 75% of them never color their hair or pierce their lips.

The problem is that stories like these change the way people see us, and more importantly, the way we see ourselves.

Not that colored hair is a bad thing, and though facial piercings may not help you get a job, that description of the Depot doesn't really bother me. The more common description of the Depot is much more damaging. It goes something like this: "The Depot is a place where you go when you fail."

This is the story we hear over and over again from our own students. It's the story they tell themselves about the Depot and about themselves. It's a story that shapes their beliefs and even their behaviour. And it's not true. And we need a new one.

Just like all cultures, nations, organizations, families and people, the Depot has a story that we tell about ourselves--a story that defines who we are. As Yuval Harari writes it in Sapiens, these stories are part of what makes human societies possible. According to Harari, the ability to make up such stories is what made homo sapiens so much more successful than the other homo species, like the Neanderthals. The stories that make up our religions and national histories bind us together in groups much larger than genes ever could. These stories are powerful, because they provide us with identities, guidance and justification for our actions.

For example, if you believe that humans are descended from peaceful, egalitarian, bonobo-like creatures that had sex freely with any and all members of their group, as suggested by Chris Ryan in Sex at Dawn, this will affect the way you view yourself as a human. It will provide an identity (humans are inherently peaceful, sharing and loving), and it will provide an explanation of why humans have a tendency to cheat on their spouses and why the divorce rate is so high. It will also suggest an answer to the problem.

But it will also fail to fit the data. Lynn Saxon, in her rebuttal of Sex at Dawn, called Sex at Dusk, shreds Ryan's analysis and makes a strong case that humans are naturally monogamous with a natural tendency to cheat on the side when they can. This is what is called the "standard narrative" of human sexual evolution, and it paints a very different picture of who we are and how we should live. Which story you believe will affect the way you view yourself and your world, and could affect your behavior.

The standard narrative of the Depot, that it's a place for students who "don't fit" the traditional model--a place for kids who fail, also has powerful implications. It suggests that there's something wrong with them, which suggests that they behave accordingly.

But what if it's not true? What if the Depot is just a different path to success, one where students can learn from mentors in real-world settings? What if it's a place where all students could thrive? Then we're not the Island of Misfit Toys, and they're not misfits. They're here, not because they are failures, but because we offer something that can help every student succeed, and they made an active choice to help themselves by taking advantage of it.

Just like societies and schools, we all have little stories about ourselves that we tell ourselves. As fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss put it, “It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

If your story is that you're a failure, victim, or misfit, that's going to shape you, and not in a good way. You may have baggage and challenges you've inherited from your history, but that doesn't have to be your story. Instead, your story can focus on the overcoming and the strengths and positives.

My own negative stories about inadequacy and fear and failure and rejection have hindered me at times throughout my life, and I know I'm not alone. I see my students struggle every day with the stories they tell themselves. Like the stories I tell myself, the standard narrative of the Depot gets propagated because it has elements of truth. Many of our students have failed at the main campus. Many feel they don't fit in. But the story is false. That's not who we are, and it's not what we're about. We need to change our narrative.

The truth is, we are all humans with tremendous potential and resilience, and that's much more encouraging than the fiction. The truth is, we can be what we want to be. We can write our own story.

Why we need mentors

"I could not have made it to where I am without  your help. You have encouraged me in ways you cannot imagine by supporting, believing and giving me a chance to follow my dreams. You opened my eyes to what I could be, what I could do, in a way that I've never thought possible. You made me want to see the world and beyond, and because of this, I cannot wait to move on to the next stage of my life... Thank you for making me do my best. Thank you for being my mentors."

That was one of our seniors, Kasey, expressing her gratitude to her mentors, Ms. Rudge and Ms. Kegler, at our annual Mentor Appreciation Breakfast.

I had opened the ceremonies with a similar sentiment, telling our mentors that they really are the highlight of our whole program at the Depot. I told them about my son's experience with his mentor at college, and how grateful I was last week, listening to him talk about his time with Luke. I told them it was the same with our students, that though teachers are important, the mentor's relationship with our kids is special because they have chosen to invest in them, and I don't think we can overestimate the power of that interest and care.

It makes me think of the mentors in my life. Lou DeLoreto, principal of E. O. Smith High School, has given me so many hours of his time over the past few years, during my administrator preparation program and now as I direct the Depot Campus. I lean on him heavily, and his honest advice and guidance have shaped and continue to shape me as a leader. Dominique Fox, Principal of Tolland High, played a similar role in my life, and I am grateful for all the time she gave me during the UCAPP program.

And then there's Byron Martin, who runs Logee's greenhouses. On top of managing these magical tropical rainforests hidden in the heart of Danielson, Byron is a brilliant beekeeper. I was lucky enough a few years ago to connect with him, and he offered to help me get started in the craft. His guidance has been invaluable as I've "bumbled" my way through my first three years of beekeeping.

And Peter Serafin, my shop instructor at Ellis Tech, impacted me in ways he will never know. I'll never forget the way he'd tap his stout finger on his desk when we got to chatting over our drafting tables, "Time is money," he'd ring out, "Time is money."

And there are others: Julia Sherman, David Pettry, Harvey Luce. I can't thank them all enough.

Humans are not just social animals, we are hyper-social. We absolutely need each other. Some say we're not even human without each other. The mentor-mentee relationship is just one part of that, but it's a key part, and one that is all too often lost in our modern world.

The genuine gratitude many of our students showed to their mentors on Friday testified to this. They need it. We all need it.

Let's get back to it.

This post is for a student

The guinea pig was missing, and they had to solve the crime.

The bloody guinea pig footprints were the most obvious evidence, but they they would have to analyze three more challenging clues: fingerprints, hair left at the scene, and blood spatter patterns.

It was all set up by one of our seniors. She's exactly the sort of student who thrives in this kind of school: independent, self-motivated, and focused on a passionate interest. In her case, that interest is forensic science.

The students, as you will see, loved it, but this senior has such high standards for herself that she could only see what went wrong.

This post is for her and all of my students who've had the wind in their faces for so long they have trouble seeing their successes and strengths.

This is for her, because the students did it. They took notes as she gave them instructions. They looked under microscopes at hair they collected from the scene and compared it to hair from suspects. They experimented with the fake blood, dropping it from different heights until it matched the drops on the floor of the bathroom. They collected fingerprints from suspects and compared the whorls and loops to those found on the bathroom sink.

With the microscopes and hair, they narrowed it down to me and one student. They came to my office with a warrant and dragged me into the Community Room to interrogate me. They asked me about the suspicious bandage on my chin--the one that matched the scenario they had come up with. They asked me about the fingerprints, and finally, they asked me about the search history that had been pulled from my computer which included searches for guinea pig recipes (they are surprisingly common, by the way).

To sum it up, they had fun, even those who said they didn't, and they did a bunch of things they'd never done before, hopefully learning some critical thinking along they way.

But it didn't get off to a good start. The fingerprint dusting technique didn't work, and this student leader was ready to give up. True, she could have been better prepared. For example, she definitely should have tried the fingerprinting technique out before hand. But we've all been there, under-prepared, and every failure is a lesson learned. Next time, I told her, she'll be prepared.

And of course, as every teacher and leader knows,  "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." No matter how much we plan, we need to be ready for the unpredictable interactions of our plan with human beings and the rest of reality. Our plan is not always at fault--it's just the nature of the universe to throw us curve balls, keep us on our toes and keep us strong.

"Failure," as a Honda engineer says in my all-time favorite video, "is the by-product of pushing the envelope." That's one reason I love CrossFit--it makes me push up against that envelope at least 3 or 4 times per week. I fail at something every time I work out. Every WOD kicks my butt and humbles me. Every Olympic lifting movement I do is a messy mixture of correct and incorrect parts, mostly incorrect.

School and work are fitness for the mind. Push the envelope, and aim high enough that you can expect failure, because failure is fuel. It gives us information to improve, and if we persevere, that's why we'll succeed, as Michael Jordan so powerfully put it. SpaceX persevered through four catastrophic failures of their Falcon rocket's ocean landings, but on their fifth try, just yesterday, they hit it: success.

As Mazer Rackham said in Ender's Game, "No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak."

In one sense, failure is our enemy, but in another, our friend. It shows us where we can improve, so that we can.

So this is my message to you, my forensic-scientist-to-be senior, and all of my students who have met with frustration so often that they can't see their success--whose lives have been just one huge obstacle after another:

1. Be open to seeing your successes, like the fun our students had with your workshop, even if they're mixed with failure, because you really are capable and successful, and

2. Embrace failure, because it is just a by-product of growth. It doesn't mean you're a failure. It means just the opposite: It means you are improving.

3. Don't expect perfection. It's a myth. Expect improvement. Demand constant improvement from yourself. You deserve it, and you are capable of it.

4. And you are improving. You're already awesome, you've already passed through so much fire, and you're only getting better. I can see it.

What happens when you set students free to learn?

Three times per year, our students present what they've been learning to a panel of parents, peers, and teachers, and I get to sit in on every one. They are called Exhibitions, and they are a huge time requirement for me, but it I love them. They allow me to keep my finger on the pulse of the school and have a focused input into the lives of my students.

Lately, I've spent a lot of time in this blog talking about our struggling students, so I thought I'd highlight a few who are taking full advantage of the independence we offer. The Big Picture model of education is centered on internships and plenty of time for students to pursue independent learning, and at exhibitions, it's that independent learning that really shines.

First, one of our seniors. Here he is, playing a song he wrote. He is studying music theory. In his exhibition, he described the bridge he built for a local park and the mushroom growing project he has been leading with other students. (The mushrooms are in the lower part of the picture.) He recently met with some younger students to talk about using Dungeons and Dragons as the basis for their independent learning projects. It's a unique idea--an example of this young man's desire to help struggling classmates, and it could be a powerful venue for helping them master social skills and other competencies. 

And then there's this sophomore. He's only been with us one month and already he's a leader-by-example. He's researching artificial intelligence (how cool is that?!) and creative writing techniques. He's an active part of our kitchen crew, which cooks breakfast for the whole school on Friday mornings, and I am super psyched to see what the next two years hold for him!

This senior is a gymnast who has a love for children that just beams out of her. Last year, she did an experiment at her internship in which she tested the effect of active play on the ability of her students to pay attention to lessons afterwards. (I love to see students doing real science!) This fall, she took a course in athletic training at a local community college. In this picture, she is asking us to analyze a photo from Humans of New York. In her advisory, they've been learning about stereotypes and the difference between objective observations and subjective interpretations. She's excited about her advisory's "Humans of UCONN" project coming later this spring. Kudos to her advisor, Shannon, for such a cool idea!

And here's another junior who loves kids. She's been doing great things at her internship at a day care center, running her own little classes and helping to schedule activities. But she has her heart set on a career health care, and she is also pursuing her interest in photography. She also designed the first "Depotwear" this year, and I love the tree logo on the sweatshirt.

And speaking of photography, this sophomore is well on his way. This self-described "audiophile" is into sight as much he is into sound. He interns at a unique photographic studio, where he does everything from framing to developing and enlarging, and on his own time he produces unique portraits of classmates and others.

And this senior is another design-oriented student. She is auditing a set design class at UCONN this spring, and she showed us this cool project she's working on--you can see the black scale model on the table, there.  It's a set for a play that can be viewed from all angles, so the audience could sit anywhere around the stage. She interns at a local school, where she is designing a series of map-based lessons to teach her students to appreciate their diversity. She has a personal interest in minimalist living--especially tiny houses--and her senior paper was about how to go about minimizing waste in your life.

It's great to see students developing their love for learning and discovering their interests, but the main reason I love watching these exhibitions is that it gives me a chance to speak into their lives about their strengths and potential. I can tell them what I see in them--their creativity, their powerful minds, their compassion and passions, maturity, professionalism, and leadership potential.

I try to do this for every student, even those who are struggling or whose exhibitions don't display the same level of independence and drive. I do it in the hope that, with the right supports, they will get there and come into their own as the powerful learners and creators they can be.

And even with the students who already demonstrate a strong desire to learn, our work is not done. There's plenty of room for them to grow in productivity and depth and breadth of knowledge. What they've demonstrated is just the beginning.

This week started rough, but then I remembered...

Depot students making fund raising muffins.

I knew I was in trouble when I felt tired before the students even came in.

I really knew I was in trouble when they started coming in, and there weren't many smiles. Negative vibes seemed to be rippling out of them (or were they coming from me?).

There weren't any more crises than usual, just a vague feeling of weight.


Maybe it was just a sort of regression to the mean: Friday was so cool, the new week had to be a bit of a let down. Or maybe it was the effect of a weekend of stewing on all of the troubles of my students. Or maybe I had fixated on my own recent failures to reach them. Whatever it was, it weighed on me... until I remembered.

I knew that constant crucial conversations are needed, but I also knew they drain energy. They're heavy. And that's all I felt coming into this week--the weight.

By the time Tuesday rolled around, things were brightening a bit--I had some great convos with students as they cleaned and baked (part of their Depot Tier 2 Internship work), and a powerful conversation with another student about strategies for dealing with stress and relationships.

But then on Wednesday that same student crashed again.

And then my Quantitative Reasoning group went into meltdown mode--angry, hurting students rebelling against math.

That was the low point, and turning point, of my week. As I reflected on the meltdown later, I realized it would have been a great opportunity to talk about anger and social skills. I made a note for a future lesson adjustment strategy. We emphasize basic life competencies here at the Depot, and my plan is to change gears as needed during lessons to address them explicitly: "Soooo, what's happening with your mood right now, and how is that affecting the rest of us?" It's about explicitly teaching things like social/emotional skills, goal setting, organization, and self-control. (I'm so fortunate to have a teacher on staff, Shannon, who is a master at this sort of thing, so I can learn from her.)

This principle was driven home again on Thursday. As I talked with one student in the morning about the career skills rubric and setting goals for productivity, we set a goal for him of two job shadow letters by noon. He frowned and hung his head, not believing he could do it. He ended up sending out five job shadow letters.

A tough conversation later that morning with another student led to questions about depression, and later, there were conversations with students about sharing food they'd received while volunteering--all great opportunities to mentor kids and help them develop the key skills they need.

As Thursday wrapped up, I had remembered something. While talking with a staff member about issues she was having with student motivation, I remembered that this is a process. We can't expect instant success, either from ourselves or our students.

This work is heavy, and sometimes pretty rough, but it also has tremendous meaning, and it's more than worth it. Every little success is a reminder of that.

I'm not sure how I lost sight of those successes coming into this week, how I lost sight of that progress, the slowness of the growth process, or how I lost my patience, but it doesn't matter. What matters is these young people and their success, not mine.

A beautiful day at a different kind of school

A beautiful day in the life of the Depot. A picture of digging deep to build a real support structure and real community.

The student kitchen crew ran like clockwork. They must have set a new personal speed record serving up their popular Texas-sized French toast.

After breakfast, we gathered in the Communtiy Room for "Pick-me-Up," a daily whole-school lesson. Not everyone was engaged in Part 3 of my lesson on "Community/Human Ecology," but most were busy offering up examples of win-win, win-lose, and lose-lose situations in human relationships--answering the questions on the slides, like:

Which is better?

A) You gain, your competitor loses
B) You both lose
C) You both gain

It was interesting to see them apply this to how they played the "prisoner's dilemma" game two weeks ago and whether they played with a win-win or lose-lose strategy. It stirred up some emotions.

And I'm pretty happy with the little poem/rap we started it all off with:

Ecology:
that branch of biology
that’s about the dependency
of one living entity
on just about every
living thing,
either productively
or destructively,
in animosity
or harmony.

We're digging deep here--asking questions that get to the heart of what it means to be human and live in a community, and I'm psyched to continue this lesson by exploring "The Chimpanzee and our family tree"--a lesson in human origins and what it means for human relationships.

After Pick-Me-Up, a student was in my office for one-on-one support and quiet study, part of our new Tier 2 support system at the Depot. He was focused, productive, wrote some amazing things, and completed an assignment that he'd been stuck on for months.

At 10:00, I headed down to the kitchen to supervise two kitchen crew members as they cooked a pot of home made ramen for their classmates, complete with fresh ginger and green onions. It was so cool when one of them came up to my office afterwards to offer me a cup. It was worth cheating on my grain-free diet.

Later, it was just as powerful to sit with our two psychology and counselling interns and talk about their work with our students. Many of our students struggle with the effects of very difficult histories and home lives, and the compassion and professionalism of these two people is awesome. It reminded me of Geoffrey Canada's approach of doing "whatever it takes" to make sure kids succeed.

After lunch we have "Book Teams." In my group, we're reading Ender's Game (love that book--Ender is so hard core). We share our thoughts after every chapter of silent reading.

Then comes the read aloud. For that, we're reading Arthurian legend--very challenging to read, with awkward, old-fashioned words and sentence structures. I told the group that we are going to approach this like CrossFit. It's tough stuff, so we'll scale the "workouts" until they can handle them--they can read aloud a sentence or a page, depending on how difficult it is for them, but they all have to read something as we pass the book around.

Next, we transitioned into our weekly "Friday Fitness" block. Students can choose from a variety of activities, including yoga, a hike on a local trail, ping-pong, and Dance Dance Revolution (those last two are new offerings for the winter). It was so beautiful to see these young people having such a good time and getting active. There were smiles on faces that haven't seen a whole lot of smiles lately.

Shannon, one of our advisors, wrapped up the day with her weekly "Kick-Me-Out" presentation. Students gave each other "shout-outs" and then reflected on what they were doing in the pictures of the week's activities that flashed across the screen and anonymous quotes of their classmates, like "My internship is the best thing that's ever happened to me." We ended by watching this cool video of one human making another very happy (definitely worth a few minutes if you haven't seen it).

Maybe this smoothly-running and awesome day was just a fluke, but I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful it's the fruit of our increased structure and support. And I'm hopeful that as we continue to build strong support structures, we can increase the productivity and harmony of this little community.

Bees, rubrics and teacher evaluation

My hives this morning

The new teacher evaluation (TEVAL) system is the source of tons of anxiety, conflict, and even anger among teachers here in CT. I've seen excellent veteran teachers crying at staff meetings when discussing the new system of formal observations, rubrics and ratings. Obviously, something's wrong with the system, or is it? What if it's all in the way we look at it?

I've been through the new TEVAL process twice as a teacher, but as a new administrator this year, I've been experiencing the system for the first time from the other side. As I've been conducting formal observations of my teachers and writing them up, I watched myself go through a shift in thinking.

I can be a bit overly critical, and in my own life I am always trying to push myself harder to improve (though I know I've got plenty of blind spots), and I'm afraid this was coming through in my write-ups and conversations with my staff about the process. In fact, I was worried about tensions and conflicts developing.

Then I realized the problem: I've been looking at this all wrong. I am not the driver of this process--I am just part of a structure.

I firmly believe that with the right structure in place, everything else falls into place. That's why we're working on building a structure at the Depot that will allow every student to thrive. That's why last year, I spent tons of time building a framework that would allow my biology students to thrive. As humans, we need the right structure of societal rules, relationships, health, and other systems if we are going to flourish. But the right structure is not about authority and hierarchies. That's not how humans work. That's not how anything works.

Bees are a great example. A lot of people think bees are ruled by the queen--that she somehow directs the activities of the hive, but that's not true at all. The whole colony is guided by a complex system of hormones and rules built into their tiny brains that determine how they interact with each other and the environment. The seemingly intelligent behaviour of the hive just emerges naturally from this set of rules.

Nature uses structures like that, not hierarchies. Humans don't function best in authority structures, but in collaborative communities.

That's how I'm seeing my new role within the TEVAL system. I'm not at the top at all. I'm just part of the structure--a structure designed to improve our schools. We're all interacting with it--its rules, rubrics and reviews of practice. We're also interacting with the rules that govern human behavior in general--rules about relationships and what makes humans thrive.

It's not about, "Here's how you need to improve." It's about, "How can we use this structure to improve together?"

The real work is the conversations

They were trying to come to an agreement about how their teams would play their next moves in our simulation of the "prisoner's dilemma." His reply was put to music, and they agreed to abandon their selfish, cut-throat strategies and start cooperating. It was a fun example of what Kerry Patterson and his colleagues call a "crucial conversation."

According to Patterson and his team, "Any time you find yourself stuck in some area of performance or improvement that's important to you, what is keeping you stuck is very often one or two crucial conversations that you're not holding or not holding well."


Lately, I feel like my life has become one big string of crucial, and difficult,  conversations. It's been like CrossFit for my relationship skills. And that's OK. In fact, maybe that's how it should be.

If my job as an educator is to do whatever it takes to see every one of my students succeed, then it's going to take lots of intentional, intensive one-on-one conversations.

It's going to take difficult conversations with a student about her depression, another about her difficult home life, another about behaviors that need to change. It's going to mean conversations about a student's need to improve his social skills or manage his anger, or another's failure to progress and need for extra support, or whether this school is the right place for him.

It's going to mean uncomfortable conversations about teacher evaluations, fundamental beliefs, and facing facts about ourselves and our relationships--conversations that create what the authors of Crucial Conversations call "a common pool of meaning." They are conversations about compromise. They are relational negotiations.

If my job as a human is to maximize every one of my relationships, it's going to take the same kind of effort, at home and at work. It's going to be messy, but good, and this is a big part of my philosophy of life: I want to immerse myself in it, pain and all, difficulty and all.

In our game, both teams had been using a destructive and selfish strategy. Their negotiation was an effort to change that, but in the next round, his team betrayed her trust, and maintained their destructive strategy in order to win the game. I guess his team had realized how difficult their side of the bargain would be and wasn't willing to follow through.

Of course, I'm hoping for better results from my crucial conversations, but I'm also realistic. They're not all going to fix all the problems. When I do a poor job of getting all the meaning on the table, when difficulties arise, conflicts are still unresolved, conditions still haven't improved, or one of us does something else to hurt the other, all is not lost. We begin a new conversation.

What we don't want to do is avoid these conversations. They are the real work of life. Shying away may save us some difficulty now, but we'll also miss out on the benefits later: improvement and the kind of relationships humans are built for.

Mushrooms, microscopes, and building a structure that works for kids

One of our guiding principles at The Depot is "learning through interests," and one of our seniors exemplifies this. Last year, his internship mentor helped him learn to grow edible mushrooms. This year, this senior decided he'd like to teach other students to do the same.

He isn't getting any special credit for it. He won't receive a grade. He's just doing it.

With his fish tank full of fungi on the table, his Google Slides presentation, and some cool time lapse videos from YouTube, he had the whole crowd engaged as he explained the need for the right growing environment. Even some who rarely speak out were asking questions, and when he passed around the sign up sheet for the workshops he's going to offer, twelve students signed up. At least one was clearly excited about it. Who knows what the long term impact of this senior's leadership will be?

We see lots of instances of interest-driven learning, like the student who spontaneously set up one of the microscopes on Thursday and just started putting tiny pieces of whatever he could find under it--spit, blood, fingernail, chips, cheek cells.

The new "kitchen crew" we started this year has been a huge source of learning for these kids as they cook breakfast every Friday for the whole school, and many of our students are thriving in awesome internships, from law firms and vet clinics to computer and automobile repair shops.

But not all of our students are ready for self-directed learning. Even with freedom and ample opportunity to discover and pursue interests, many students have trouble with motivation and struggle to progress.

So we're extending our new tiered support system to include a "Tier 2 internship," which is a combination of Depot-based projects (cooking, designing bulletin boards, cleaning, etc.), volunteering, and explicit instruction in career skills and life skills from the Competency Rubric. Let's establish some small wins, build some confidence through basic competence.

I'm convinced that if we build the right structure--the right environment, these students will naturally thrive. To me, this is a big part of leadership--finding those rules, that structure that will allow that natural growth.

Like mushrooms (and every other living thing), humans are built to thrive within a certain type of structure. My goal is to find that structure--to find a better fit for human nature when it comes to school. And that's why I love being at the Depot--because I think we're on the right track.

Hugs like light through stormclouds

Let's just say the Depot is not without its crises and conflicts. Hardly a day goes by without some drama unfolding. Many of these young people are being  battered by life, and many lack the resiliency or the skills to cope. Sometimes the strife ripples out into our little community like a gathering thunderstorm, or else it hangs in the air like black magic.

But just as frequently, light breaks through the clouds.

Like the excitement of one struggling young person who landed his first internship last week, and another young lady whose internship just turned into a job at a law firm.

There's the growing confidence of a young man whose challenging technology project is finally getting off the ground, and the excitement and pride of a young man who came to tell me about his new, higher SAT scores.

There's the excitement among the staff as we plan new supports for students.

There's the generosity of a young lady who baked twelve dozen cookies for everyone, and the seven students who worked all morning yesterday cooking a delicious ham dinner for the whole school.

There are the smiles on faces that haven't seen many smiles lately, as they picked out an unwrapped gift during the Yankee swap.

And there are the courageous young women who sang impromptu songs for our open mic.

But the brightest light this week came from one powerful young man whose courage and compassion just blew me away. The past month has been just one painful blow after another for him, and on top of all that, a friend at the school has been seething with anger towards him for a week. So he decided to do something about it.

First, he approached his angry friend and tried to initiate a conversation: "Hey, man, we have to talk about this.." he began, and then explained his side of the story.

There was no response to this initial effort: the other student just turned away. But that wasn't the end of it. Later that day, as the angry student was sitting for the Yankee swap, this powerful young man approached him again. He came up behind him, and I heard him say something like, "I may get punched in the face for this hug, but I'm doing it anyway."

Then he wrapped his arms around this angry student, and that frown that had been there all week just... broke. It broke into a smile, though this angry kid tried to fight it. That bear hug broke through that anger like a the sun through storm clouds.

Thank you, young man, for reminding me what it's all about--what being human is all about.

Changing school from a filter to a foothold

When students are failing, we can blame it on a family issue, some supposed character flaw, or other factor out of our control, but what good will that do? We can let them fail, pass them off to someone else, or just graduate them even though they're not ready. But what good would that do?

What if, instead, we responded by increasing support?

At the Depot, we value personalized education. Our advisors (teachers) meet at least twice per year with parents and students to design individualized learning plans that outline projects the students will do, competency goals, advisory work, online math work, etc.

But the independent learning environment that lies at the heart of the Depot requires a lot of soft skills (conscientiousness, self-control, organization, etc.) and basic hard skills (reading, writing, math) that many students lack.

It dawned on me that we really need a tiered SRBI-style support system. Tier I is the current advisory/self-directed learning model. Students not being successful there can be moved to a second tier: group workshops, like our successful Senior Project Boot Camp and focused 1:1 sessions to help students complete projects, writing assignments, etc.

Just last week, a student who had been struggling to get started on his independent project since the beginning of the school year started and finished the first step in one focused, 2 hour session.

Students needing more support would move to a third tier. This highest level of support could include moving to a special support "advisory" for part or all of each day.

This is just a rough sketch, but I was excited when this resonated with some colleagues this week.

And of course, it needs to apply to behavioral issues as well. This week I did my second real restorative circle, and these are a powerful Tier II behavioral support, one that could lead to other supports such as weekly check-ins and counselling.

Success! The Rasperry Pi computer is up and running!

As I've told a couple of students this week, this is really about making sure they get the skills they need succeed, whether those are academic skills, social skills, or self-control.

I know that we won't be able to help everyone. I know there will be some who simply refuse our help, or whose needs exceed our capacity, but until that becomes clear, our job is to keeping ramping up support.

School should not be a filter, to filter out those who don't meet the standard. It's not a service for the elite--for those who can already teach themselves, or whose home lives have already ensured their success. It needs to be for everyone.

It can't be a filter. It's got to be a foothold, a foundation, a fulcrum.

We humans aren't built to thrive in a weed-out-the-weak, social Darwinist world. We're much too interconnected for that. We're built to support each other.

Brights spots of engagement

That's one of our students on the slackine. It was one of our Friday Fitness options this week. It's much harder than it looks, but it's an addictive blast. And he was fully engaged. How can we get students to be this engaged in learning?

For this week's "pick-me-up" activity on Friday morning, I gave the students the data we've been collecting on engagement. Ellen, our instructional assistant, has been walking around at random times each day recording how many students are on-task. As I told the kids Friday morning, "on-task" is not the same as engagement, and certainly not the same as flow, but it'll have to do for now.

So I handed out the data--just a list dates, times, and percentages, telling them that I wanted them to be a part of this whole "empowerment evaluation" process I'm trying to implement here. I told them I wanted them to have a say in improving their school.

I talked about doing science on ourselves. Research. Making hypotheses and testing them against the data--looking for patterns.

And then what happened?


Well, there was at least one comment along the lines of "Man, we suck!"

There was also some blank staring at the sheet.

But there was also plenty of discussion, and plenty of observations being thrown around.

I didn't give them this graph--just the data.

A few were surprised that Monday was so high. There was at least one hypothesis about why that was the case.

Many noticed that Tuesday and Thursday were very low. But this didn't surprise anyone, since these are the internship days, when fewer students are here, and those who are here are waiting to go to internship or returning from internship.

So I asked them the central question, "Would you like to see these numbers increase?" After a few heartfelt answers of "Yes!" I reminded them that if you want to see something change, you have to change something. You can't keep doing everything the same and expect results to change (seems like I've heard that somewhere before...).


As I walked around checking on their work, there were several students jotting things down on the data sheet, but one student in particular stood out. His sheet was covered in calculations. He was a picture of engagement. In fact, I'm pretty sure he was in flow.

I asked what he was finding, and he told me that he'd figured out that Wednesday's had the highest engagement, followed by Mondays and then Fridays. He'd done this by summing up all of the percentages for each day.

Why didn't he use the average? Because he was starting from where he was. I'm not sure he knew what an average was, or that it could apply here. Instead, he was working with what he knew to solve a new and meaningful problem.

Later, when he was back in his classroom, still working on the problem, I saw that he had a table constructed that included the numbers of data points for each day of the week. He had figured out that the different numbers of measurements on each day were important. When I asked him about it the problem, he replied, "Yeah, I know. I'm gonna even that out later."

Awesome. Awesome example of problem solving. Awesome example of motivation. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose in action.

He didn't have to do it (Autonomy).

He was in his flow channel (Mastery).

He was working on a real problem--to figure out what was happening with student engagement at his school (Purpose).

"One of the techniques for solving problems is called Bright Spots Analysis," I had told the students earlier that morning. "You look at the best days, and ask yourself why they are the best, and you try to replicate that."

This engaged student on Friday was a bright spot. Working with that data, doing some serious quantitative reasoning, he was as engaged as he was on that slackline. He was as engaged as I've ever seen him--as engaged as I've ever seen any student, for that matter.

Now if we can just replicate that.

Science, math, and choice at the Depot

I was more excited than I look. :-)

This blood-typing experiment was a great way to kick off the week! The meticulous way this student handled the samples was beautiful to watch. But the best thing about it was that she chose this experiment, sort of.

The Big Picture model doesn't rely on a traditional curriculum. Theoretically, student interest drives instruction, but it's not quite that simple.



Here at the Depot, students work through some predetermined activities: an autobiography, written reflections, oral presentations, online math programs, and reading and math groups, but much of their time is taken up by activities of their choosing. They spend two days a week at an internship and they get at least an hour a day for self-directed learning, which often involves projects they design, aimed at learning goals of their choice.

The blood typing experiment was one example, designed to meet a science requirement. Another student gave an energetic "pick-me-up" presentation this week to the whole school on the "Law of Attraction" and how positivity can benefit your life. She told her peers that negativity only attracts negative people and events to your life. She testified about the benefits she had seen: weight loss, more friends, less depression. Her peers were fully engaged, carefully filling out "gratitude lists" for the activity at the end. It was an exciting example of an interest-based project.

But this system is not without its challenges. What do you do, for example, with those students who are not motivated to do any independent work? And what content or skills should be mandatory, if any?

From what I've seen so far, most students prefer to demonstrate skills like collaboration, creativity and communication, rather than academic content knowledge, critical thinking, empirical or quantitative skills. The blood type experiment, for example, was not fully the student's choice. It was done to fill a science requirement, though the student chose how she would fill it.

Why is it that most students don't naturally want to do scientific experiments or academically rigorous projects on their own time? Why do we have to force it with requirements? Is it because their previous schooling has turned them off to academics or because they lack the skills, or both?


While I may choose to pursue a scientific research on my own time (I love Google Scholar), I'm also pretty good at it, and I've had lots of positive experiences with it, so I enjoy it. I could be wrong, but I think that's the key. 

The first student would not have chosen a blood type experiment without a science requirement, even though she was interested in blood, but the second student gave talk on positivity just because she wanted to. The difference? Maybe a bit more interest on the part of the second student, but a big difference in confidence and competence. The second student felt much more competent with both the content and the skill of presenting that talk. Even though the first had more skill than she recognized--she's a natural in the laboratory--she was probably a bit intimidated by the scientific content.

If our students lack competence (or confidence) in math and science, they will not choose to study it. I've heard many students, here and elsewhere, say how they once loved science--until middle school or high school, when they started to feel they lacked essential skills to pursue it. As Dr. Ross Greene puts it, "Kids do well if they can. The real question then, is "How can we help them gain the competencies they need so they'll start choosing to pursue greater competency math and science?"


Which leads me to the question of how to increase their competence. As I read more of Hattie, and as I experience more at the Depot, I'm starting to feel a need for some blend of explicit instruction with student autonomy. Maybe they can be persuaded to pursue greater competence in these areas if adequate support is provided, or maybe there is a need for a structure that mandates science and math skills and really teaches them well to all students.

There is no doubt that options are powerful and interest is a great motivator, but without essential science and math skills, science and math really aren't even an option at all, and that's not acceptable. The world today is too technical for that. But with the right supports in place, I think they'll all jump at opportunities to do science and math.

Teaching the skills they really need to succeed

A student swipes in at her hospital internship.

Last weekend I read this report called "Fostering and Measuring Skills: Improving Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills to Promote Lifetime Success."

To sum it up, when it comes to success, non-cognitive skills are just as important as cognitive skills: "Conscientiousness predicts years of schooling with the same strength as measures of intelligence." And most significantly for us at the Depot, non-cognitive skills appear to be more malleable than cognitive skills once adolescence has been reached.

And according to this report, the best way to teach non-cognitive skills appears to be programs that include a workplace and mentoring component.

Bingo. That's the Big Picture model.

The Depot staff and I have recently begun trying to measure both types of skills with our new Competency Rubric. This trimester, we asked the students to pick one Competency from the rubric that they will focus on (in addition to Communication), for the Exhibitions. It's interesting that most of the students so far have picked Career Skills or Life Skills, which both have indicators related to the Big Five non-cognitives, like collaboration, responsibility, adaptability, self-monitoring, social skills, curiosity, and goal-setting.

During their Exhibitions, which consumed the entire week, students had to present evidence that they have been mastering these skills. Usually, this means discussing their internships and other real-world experiences.

One student told detailed stories about the brake job he'd helped complete at his job shadow, how he worked independently to remove a differential gear, and how he collaborated with other students to figure out how to speed up the breakfast cooking process on Friday mornings at the Depot.

Another showed pictures from his shadow day at a The Vanilla Bean: his kimchi prep work was a meticulous work of art.

One shared the schedule she developed for the toddlers at the daycare where she interns (and where she is absolutely loved by the staff). She shared how she is learning to deal with misbehavior by redirecting students, rather than "saying 'No'."

One student shared about how he has been installing hydrogen fuel systems in cars at his internship, and has been asked by his mentor to get involved with a new business he is starting. Another has been repairing computers, completing some repairs on her own.

Many of these students struggle with completing their "schoolwork" at the Depot, but thrive in their internships. One told how she adjusts and adapts to new environments constantly at the middle school she works at, switching from PE class to social studies to literacy, helping prepare lessons and making classroom motivational posters that are in high demand. She mentioned to me yesterday that her mentor at the middle school is the person who has had the greatest positive impact on her life.

Though we have a lot of work to do measuring and teaching non-cognitive skills, I'm excited that we're on the right track. As Kautz, et al. wrote (emphasis mine):

"Adolescent remediation is possible for children who grow up in disadvantaged environments in their early years. The available evidence suggests that the most promising adolescent interventions are those that target non-cognitive skills as well as programs that off er mentoring, guidance and information. Many adolescent programs that focus on academic skills or temporarily change a participant's environment are only successful in the short run although the short-term results can often appear to be spectacular. Workplace-based programs that teach non-cognitive skills appear to be e ffective remedial interventions for adolescents. They motivate acquisition of work-relevant skills and provide for disadvantaged youth the discipline and guidance which is often missing in their homes or high schools. Successful interventions at any age emulate the mentoring and attachment that successful families give their children."

Of course, we can't neglect cognitive skills, and we won't, but if Kautz et al. are right, they're only half the story, and we need to be intentional and rigorous about teaching all of it.