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E-zine
Are
You a Thermometer or a
Thermostat? I have a beautiful
new granddaughter named Ainsley. At birth she
weighed 7 pounds 6 oz. But by the time she was 5
days old, she had lost nearly 2 pounds. She
was taken to the Emergency Room and admitted to
Pediatrics. Several medical professionals said,
"She has to eat more", but that didn't help her
gain weight! Putting in a feeding tube helped
with immediate nourishment, but it didn't help
solve the underlying problem. Finally an observant
nurse said, "This baby's tongue tied; she can't
nurse properly" and then took action to save the
day --- and maybe the baby's life. Lots of people in
this situation played the role of Thermometer. But the nurse --
the one who finally saved the day -- was the
Thermostat. What's the
difference? A Thermometer is an
instrument that can accurately measure what
is. It gives us just the facts! A Thermostat, on
the other hand, can change the temperature.
It doesn't just tell us what is, it has the ability
to change what is into something better. Are you a
Thermometer or a Thermostat? Do you and the
others in your school just measure what is or do
you look for ways to change and improve the school
climate, your teaching methods and techniques, your
curriculum, your materials or whatever it is that
you could control to make the situation
better? Many of us who are
well-meaning and dedicated educators want to do our
best for the kids. But we sometimes have the
attitude that we need to find the winners (let me
look at the test scores, or the cumulative records,
or the honor roll) rather than create the winners
(How can I challenge this kid who seems to be
turned off to school? How can I motivate the
unmotivated? How can I make this subject more
engaging and interesting? How can I capture
their attention?). Finding the winners
is the approach of the thermometer.
Thermometer behavior is what we do when we measure
what is happening now. We find the best
students and we find the problem students and go
from there. Creating winners is
the quest of the thermostat! Thermostat
behavior occurs when we anticipate both problems
and successes. It's when we see the needs
before they happen and act to keep the problems
from happening in the first place! It's when
you build on strengths and work on weaknesses and
approach both in a positive way. I believe we can be
the visionaries and the motivators -- the
thermostats who prepare the climate for the change
to come. You might ask --
What does that mean on a practical level?
First of all, here's what it doesn't mean --- it
doesn't mean throwing out all of the good things
teachers have always done just to say we're now
doing something new. Instead, it means
looking at our current practice to see what is
worth keeping, what is effective, what needs to be
built upon and what needs to be done away with and
totally changed. Most people agree
that in the abstract(or when it doesn't affect them
directly) change is a good thing. But many
times when change hits us in the face we don't like
it at all! Our reactions may be something
like this: Sometimes these may
be valid responses, but many times when we are
faced with change we become trapped into seeing the
world in only one way rather than seeing the
possibilities that a change might offer.
Below are some suggestions for responding like a
thermostat to the changes the 21st century is
bringing to us and to our students. 1. Teach
students to think. One problem with
many of today's students is that they don't know
how to think. They can tell you how they feel
and they can tell you their opinions on many
things. If they've been successful on
homework assignments or tests they can usually tell
you the many facts they've memorized. But
they have difficulty in constructing and expressing
a rational and well-thought-out argument to defend
their opinions. I am convinced one of the
most basic skills of the 21st century is to learn
how to do critical thinking. Teaching kids to
think means teaching them to: 2. Use
assessment for learning rather than using it solely
as an indicator of learning. I don't need to
tell you we are in the age of high stakes
testing! Every teacher in the United States
is painfully aware of this fact. But when we
only do assessment of learning -- which is the role
of the standardized test -- we merely act as
thermometers measuring students. Somehow policy
makers assume that giving students high stakes
standardized tests will improve their motivation
and raise their achievement. But that hasn't
happened. Simply demanding higher scores,
even when they are accompanied by rewards and
sanctions, hasn't worked. Instead, frustrated
teachers and administrators are understandably
trying to figure out how they can look better in
terms of test scores. Yet this is a very
narrow goal and has limited results in terms of
long term learning and understanding on the part of
students. For the long term,
to raise student achievement we need assessment for
learning. How does this work? Let's
start with classroom assessment. Maybe you
give all of your students a quiz and most don't do
very well on it. If you're doing assessment
of learning, you record the grades in the
gradebook, complain a little to another teacher and
then move on! When you're doing
assessment for learning, you'll probably ask
yourself some questions based on the quiz
results: Assessments
shouldn't be accountability hammers hitting us over
the head at every turn! Instead, they should
be helpful tools for us as we do our job.
Several research studies show that formative
assessments -- those assessments we do continually
as we teach and modify our teaching based on the
results --- can contribute more to improving
student achievement than any other school-based
factor. We should use them as the helpful
tools they can be. 3. Know your
goals, know where you and your students are headed
and know the areas where they need the most help...
Then develop an action plan. More than once I've
asked a teacher or a teaching team, "Why are you
teaching this?" Usually the answer is either
"It's in the book" or "We have to because it's part
of the standards". While both of those may be
truthful answers, neither should be the reason we
are teaching anything! Instead, the rationale
should have to do with what the students need to
learn and how you are moving them in that
direction. Our teaching
environment must be learner-centered. Both
students and teachers must have a vision and know
where they are going and what they want to
accomplish. As in the world of
sports, these goals are usually accomplished in
small steps while never taking one's eye off the
final target. Where are you going with your
students, and what's your game plan for getting
there? 4. Start your
students on the road of lifelong
learning. Many of our
students have the mistaken impression that once
they manage to finish school, their days of
learning are over. Nothing could be further
from the truth! All of us --- you and me as
well as our students --- must be lifelong learners
in order to function and succeed in today's
world. The concept of
lifelong learning is a fairly new one. My
grandfather, for example, didn't talk or think a
lot about being a lifelong learner! He was a
farmer on a farm he inherited from his father when
World War I ended. He didn't have much of a
formal education, but in those days it didn't seem
to matter. He was rather
typical of his generation. Let's look at some
of the facts: At the beginning of
the 20th century, the average American went to
school for 6-8 years. Finishing 8th grade was
considered all formal schooling most people
needed. By 1940, graduating from high school
was the norm for an educated person, though you
could still get a good job even without a high
school diploma. What's changed in a
half century? The quick answer is --- almost
everything! In the United States and most
other Information Age economies, approximately 15%
of available jobs are unskilled and almost all of
these pay the minimum wage and no more. In
the Industrial Age, we were lucky to have an
economy that functioned on low skills and high
wages. This is no longer true in the
Information Age. In our global economy, the
competition has either high skills or low
wages. Do you detect a
problem here? What most teachers know is that
our kids want the money without the work!
They don't want to work hard in school so that they
can master the high skills and complex knowledge
necessary to compete in the global
marketplace. It's often a problem of
attitude. A recent study
showed that 80% of kindergarteners loved school and
thought they would do well, study hard and succeed
in school. The same study indicated that only
5% of high school seniors felt that way. Something happens
during the years of schooling to "unmotivate"
students rather than motivate them to try their
hardest and do their best. This leads us to
my last suggestion: 5. Capture the
dreams of your students and show them how they can
work to make them reality. This is where we
can really make a difference as the thermostats
rather than the thermometers of their lives.
Build on positive attitudes. Create that
enthusiasm for life and for learning. Kids
don't know there are limits. They think
anything and everything is possible. But many kids don't
know where to go from there. They have the
dreams -- sometimes quite far-fetched ones at
that. But what's the next step? One of
my favorite quotes to use with kids when taking the
steps from dreams to reality is A nice thought, but
how do we help kids to do that? We can help
if we build on each child's strengths and recognize
the many different types of talents and abilities
our students have. We need to address and act
upon differences in readiness, learning styles and
interests rather than putting students in a
standardized, one-size-fits-all box!
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