Behind the curriculum, but...

If you read my last post, you either:

1) Think the mastery-based system is an abject failure (if your priority is coverage of the curriculum), or

2) Still hold out hope, if not.

But I thought I should balance that last post with some additional info. that suggests another reason to "hold out hope."

1) I forgot to mention that, while I'm several weeks behind where I was last time I taught the course (2 years ago), I am only a week or two behind my colleagues teaching the same course (with traditional methods) this year.

2) More importantly, I thought I'd compare student performance across the years, and threw in a previous year for good measure. First, there's the grade distribution:

 

Note the blue line is this year: mastery-based, project-based, and differentiated, with a no zero policy.

In 2013, I had begun the project-based, differentiated approach, but without the mastery and no zero components.

In 2012, I ran it as a traditional course.

Telling?

Maybe it's obvious--give kids second (and third) chances, more interesting work, and more time, and they succeed at a higher rate. But keep in mind: the mastery, "no zero" model also includes the requirement that they must do all of the assignments and meet a minimum standard on each one. There are no opt-outs (zeros) allowed.

In the first semester this year, my students completed a total of 8 projects, each taking several days, 14 video quizzes and shorter assignments, 8 labs, plus tests, quizzes, and other assorted tasks.

So is the bar lower or higher?

And what's the point of the "bar" anyway? Isn't the point to see them learn how to learn, master the material, and value hard work and quality and perseverance?

Is school just some sort of filter--a gateway or obstacle designed to keep certain kids from passing through to a productive and happy life, or is it a springboard to make sure they all do?

Falling behind the curriculum with the mastery model

So here I am at the end of the third quarter and I figure I am 5-6 weeks behind where I was when I taught the same course 2 years ago.

I know it's crazy, but I just realized this yesterday, when I took a close look at my gradebooks and Moodle site.  I might have noticed earlier, but we switched around some topics in the curriculum, so it made it hard to compare years.

As I started scratching dates and topics into my Bullet Journal and it began to dawn on me just how far behind, I started to get anxious.

This is the course I've been experimenting with--the one I'm differentiating and using the mastery-based approach with.  This is the one with no zeros, no late penalties--the one of been trying to motivate with autonomy, mastery, and purpose (my mantra).

Maybe it's failed.

That's what I was thinking, anyway.

Then I got practical and came up with a plan for paring down the remaining content so I could cover the required breadth of material in the remaining 8 weeks of the year.

But still, today in class, I felt the need to pressure them: "OK. So you need to get done x, y, and z by tomorrow or you're going to end up with an incomplete on your report card."

...which is exactly what I don't want to resort to--the carrot and stick method, the cattle prod method, the authoritarian method, the "beatings will continue until morale improves" method .

Because Pink's "autonomy, mastery, and purpose" approach has evidence to back it up. It works better than external motivation. So though I'm open to being wrong, first I'll look for the problem elsewhere. I can think of a few places off the top of my head:

1) The curriculum is just too broad. And it turns out I added 3 new projects this year that I didn't use two years ago, including one on cancer prevention. These projects that took the place of faster, easier worksheets and other traditional activities I used to cover the same material two years ago.

2) It's been a rough 3rd quarter, with tons of snow days, multiple sophomore extend field trips, and a student teacher.

3) "What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity... What looks like laziness is often exhaustion...What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem." This quote from Chip & Dan Heath's book, Switch, is my other mantra.

4) I started using the mastery approach this year, which allows the students multiple attempts at every assignment. This has obvious potential implications for time.

5) I also implemented a "no zero" policy, which includes a "no late penalty" policy, which together with #2 tends to stretch out the time-line of projects a bit.


6) Though I've seen some success, I haven't mastered the art of motivation in this mastery-based approach.

Excuses? Maybe. But why should the traditional mile-wide curriculum/traditional instruction model be the default, anyway. Seems to me, the system is crying out for change. As long as there are failing students, it's failing them.

Testing what really matters

Measurement is good, as long as what you're measuring is meaningful.

Thanks to @kburiano

for the link to this great article that beautifully explains the importance of measurement and the importance of non-cognitive skills. There's been a lot of talk about these so-called "soft skills" lately in the business press, and for good reason. But they're generally neglected in schools (especially high schools), where we focus on content knowledge and skills. This is probably  because many educators don't think it's the job of the school to teach these things, but it could also be due in part to the difficulty in measuring them.

We struggled with this when we were working on our new graduations standards at the high school. Some of us wanted something about community and making a global contribution to be part of the standards, but we dropped it in part because of concerns about how we would measure it.

Maybe this is why typical standardized tests focus on easily measurable things like memory of facts, vocabulary, and mathematical techniques. But it's more likely we just haven't really decided, as schools and as a society, to really value the things that really matter.

Measurement is an essential factor in improvement, and measuring the things that matter really is possible. I believe that everything is inherently measurable, and as I've read books like Mindset, Flow, and the Happiness Hypothesis, I've often been excited by clever ways psychologists come up with for quantifying human psychology. This piece by Susan Engel just confirmed it all. She outlines a set of 6 attributes we should and could measure in schools, attributes that are much more important than a set of SAT vocab words or factoring a polynomial:

1. Reading
2. Inquiry
3. Flexible Thinking and the Use of Evidence
4. Conversation
5. Collaboration
6. Engagement

I'd add a more to the list: maybe perseverance, self-control, creativity, compassion, mindfulness, to name a few, but I don't have metrics handy (though I'm sure we could come up with some).

So let's get going. It's time to focus on what's really important, and we can develop the tools.

Pushing the envelope, and loving it

I know I'm late to this party, but my instructor showed this vid in class the other day and I keep thinking about it.

I know it focuses on the first follower, and that's important, but I feel like the "shirtless guys" need the most encouragement. Isn't their role the scariest? And isn't that partly why the first follower is so key?

And I think that's why watching this video is encouraging.

If you've ever been on the front lines, on the edge, risking things and trying things and making yourself vulnerable and open to criticism and failure and pushing the envelope of your abilities and maybe even the envelope of what people expect or think is possible, then you can probably can relate to this guy, too.

Of course, he's just having fun. It's pretty low-stakes to dance at a concert. But then again, most of what we're usually worried about is actually not as high-stakes as we think.

And isn't it pretty cool even before everyone joins in? In fact, isn't that the coolest part of the video, before everyone else joins in? When he's out there alone, "making a fool of himself," and then when the second guy comes out (the first follower).

Of course it's exciting when everyone joins in the party, but the coolest part is clearly the beginning.

What if it had died out after the first few? 

No party, but still pretty cool.

What if the first follower had not come out?

Not quite as cool, but I would still love it, just because this gutsy and fun-loving shirtless honey badger of a guy is throwing it our there.

So what are you afraid of? What am I afraid of? The fear, the challenge, the rush, like you're about to crash... that's what it's all about, isn't it?

It's not just about success. It's about the process of pushing that envelope.

And that's what leadership is about, too, at least a big part of it: Vision, and overcoming that fear of change and criticism and failure and having the guts to be that shirtless guy.

How to not suck the life out of your lessons

The central dogma of biology.

Now that sounds exciting, doesn't it.

Not.

Sure, it's fascinating to me--the concept that the information stored in DNA is copied into RNA and read by ribosome "codereaders" to make proteins, which then make pretty much everything else we're made of.

But then, I've been doing "science" for 30 years. I have tons of schema in my head about these things and so I can "relate" to it. Weird, I know.

So why do I expect my students to respond like me?

They need something they can latch on to.

The latest section of Chip and Dan Heath's book, Made to Stick, is about using emotion to help draw people in.

Not a lot of emotion in that central dogma thing.

Had me wondering about our next unit on genetically modified organisms, and how I can tap this for their next assignment. Maybe a real story about GMOs--something close to home?

Then I was wondering how this fits with my mantra: autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and I figured it was about the purpose part.

It's about making it real, immediate, and relevant to them.

Interesting: The Heath brothers told the story of a study in which they told people all these horrible statistics about Africa and then asked them to donate money. then to the second group, they told the story of one impoverished African girl and that their donation would go to her. The group that heard the story of the girl gave twice as much, on average.

And here's the real kicker: They took a third group and told them the statistics and then the story of the girl. This third group gave half as much as the group that just heard the story of the girl.

Statistics--analytical details, kill emotion and motivation.

Well, maybe that wasn't exactly their message, but it's pretty much it. Get us in an analytical frame of mind and our emotions die.

I wonder if that happens in school? I wonder if we get kids in an analytical frame of mind that sucks the life right out of them.

No, I don't wonder. I know we do.