"Hello fellow teachers," a student said to a few colleagues and me as we walked down the hall. "Since when are you a teacher?" one of my colleagues replied.

I was surprised by this response, and thought of Paulo Freire's belief that all of us are both students and teachers. I also thought of my students, who taught me more about how to--and how not to--treat them and teach them than I learned from education courses, in-service training, or supervisors' feedback.

I learned from students who told me I needed to talk less and listen more.

I learned from students who struggled with basic arithmetic but could solve logic puzzles faster than I could.

I learned from students who told me--and then showed me--they were better off in heterogeneous groups than homogeneous ones.

I learned from students who solved problems using different methods than the ones I used.

I learned from students who rejected my "you can do it too" speeches, and reminded me that I was there to teach them, not preach to them.

I learned from students who asked, "Why do we have to show our work if we can solve problems in our heads?"

I learned from students who told me my class was boring and why it was boring.

I learned from students who "needed" to go to the bathroom whenever they became confused in class.

I learned from students who disproved widely held stereotypes of low-income urban youth.

I could go on and on because I learned from all of my students (one of many benefits of my student feedback system). And if I hadn't learned as much as I did from them, they wouldn't have learned as much as they did from me.

Image provided by GECC, LLC with permission

Posted by David Ginsburg at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In my first post on this blog, here's what I wrote about my early struggles as an urban teacher:

Just six weeks in, and with my classroom already up for grabs, insult and injury came when I was decked by a stray elbow while trying to break up a fight in class. As it turned out, though, this physical blow was far less staggering than the emotional one I sustained just five minutes later. On my way downstairs for an icepack, I looked out the window and saw a young man's body in a pool of blood. I never felt more hopeless.

The big question, then: How did I restore hope? And the answer begins with Abraham Maslow. More specifically, his hierarchy of needs, which comes up in one education course after another. But did you ever think it would have real implications for you in the classroom? I didn't--until I told a colleague how hopeless I felt, and he replied, "Maslow's hierarchy."

He then asked me where I was on Maslow's hierarchy, and the answer was obvious, since my switch from corporate executive to I'm-going-to-change-the-world educator was all about self-actualization. "And where do you think most of these kids are?" he asked. And the answer was just as obvious. From hunger to homelessness to estranged parents to crushed confidence, most of my students were preoccupied with needs far more fundamental than being all they could be.

The implication of this was obvious too. Treating students as though they had the same priorities and goals that I had at their ages was a set-up for frustration--for students and me alike. Projecting my values onto students was causing me to clash with kids rather than connect with them. In essence, I felt hopeless because I felt helpless, an inevitable outcome when you try to help others in ways they don't want help.

The point here isn't that we as educators can--or should even try to--fill all voids in students' lives outside of school. We must, however, do our part to address students' needs in school. A common unmet need among my students, for example, related to self-esteem, which I addressed in many ways including those I've shared in previous posts (Behavior Management and Classroom Culture categories).

Yet the reason my Maslow's hierarchy reflection helped restore hope for me had more to do with appreciating students' needs than addressing them. This reflection also inspired me to not only consider how students' needs differed from mine, but how their lives differed from mine. And when those differences contributed to behaviors that I considered unacceptable, whereas I once would have been furious, I later became curious.

I now work with school leaders and teachers to also respond to students' behavior with curiosity rather than preconceptions. I'm reminded of a first-year teacher I coached whose background was very different from her students' backgrounds. One day I heard her say to a student, "Thomas, you'd be doing much better in here if you weren't late. You need to start getting here on time."

After praising this teacher for being concerned about Thomas, I asked her if she knew why he was tardy. She said she wasn't sure, but figured he was staying up late watching TV or playing video games. I told her that was possible, but that sometimes students are late for reasons beyond their control. And sure enough, we looked into this situation and found out that 13-year old Thomas was responsible for getting three younger siblings ready in the morning and walking them to school in the opposite direction of his school.

With a new perspective, this teacher helped Thomas develop a plan for getting caught up when he was late. More important, from that point on, she stopped concluding based solely on her life what students needed or why they acted a certain way, and instead also considered the realities of students' lives.

In my experience, that's something all great teachers do--and something Maslow's hierarchy speaks to.

Image by GECC, with permission

Posted by David Ginsburg at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I'm often surprised when teachers are surprised when their students perform poorly on tests. Sure there are kids whose scores belie their skills, such as those who have test anxiety or had a bad day or took the test on an empty stomach. For the most part, though, students' performance on tests is predictable based on their day to day performance in class. And that's the problem: teachers who are surprised by students' performance on tests often aren't assessing students' understanding in class as routinely or effectively as they need to be.

Routine, effective assessment means knowing what students know or don't know now. No waiting for the chapter test, much less a year-end standardized test. In fact, no waiting until you grade students' papers after class, since the time for timely formative assessment is during class when you can identify ASAP what students don't get and why they don't get it, and clear up their confusion right away.

One key to such in-the-moment assessment is circulating to see how students are doing as they're working on something in class--whether it's a five-minute "Do Now" or a 45-minute discovery activity. Just be sure when you do this to assess all students before you assist any students.

Another key to immediate, reliable assessment is effective questioning techniques. I've written before about one such technique, cold calling, and here are a few more:

• Ask, Don't Tell. Ask questions through which you can pull information from students rather than provide it to them. Examples: give students diagrams of insects and arachnids (or, better yet, have them create their own), and ask them to identify similarities and differences rather than doing so for them; draw a few figures with lines of symmetry inserted and ask students what they think a line of symmetry is rather than define it for them up front. Same goes for discussing readings or interpreting graphs, where you'll get a better sense for students' understanding if you solicit their opinions and analysis before sharing yours.

• Avoid Yes-No Questions. Ask questions that require students to say or show what they do or don't understand rather than if they understand. In other words, lots of what, why, and how questions rather than knee-jerk yes-no questions like "Does everyone understand?" or "Is everyone ready to move on?" or "Does this make sense?" I've noticed even when facilitating workshops that participants are more responsive when I ask, "What questions do you have?" than when I ask, "Any questions?" Similarly, it's better to ask, "What do you remember about...? " rather than "Do you remember...?"

• Target Conceptual Understanding. Ask questions that assess and facilitate conceptual understanding before asking those aimed at procedural understanding. (Example: "What is perimeter?" rather than "What is the formula for perimeter?")

In my experience, teachers who assess students' understanding using these practices are rarely if ever surprised by their students' performance on tests. And more important, they're pleased with their students' performance on tests, since formative assessment efficiency on the part of teachers is a key to summative assessment proficiency on the part of students.

What questions do you have?

Image provided by Phillip Martin with permission

Posted by David Ginsburg at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Doctors don't prescribe drugs or reach for a scalpel the moment a patient reports symptoms. Doctors diagnose first, and treat second.

Coaches don't cut players from the team every time they're in a slump. Coaches determine what's wrong with a player's shot or swing or stroke, and then work with that player to fix it.

In myriad other settings, experts similarly identify the sources of problems before deciding how to address those problems. One place, however, where this doesn't always happen is school, especially when it comes to students' misbehavior.

Writing students' names on the board. Moving their seats. Giving them detention. Calling their parents. Suspending them. These and other common punitive responses rarely if ever improve students' behavior. And a big reason for this is that they fail to assess--much less address--the causes of students' behavior.

Martin Haberman spoke to this in his book, Star Teachers, when he wrote, "Star teachers act only in terms of the most appropriate response to a particular child, after they determine his motive. They never respond as if there is a universally correct teacher response to a child's misbehavior without first knowing that child's motivation."

As for what that motivation may be, Haberman cited the work of Rudolph Dreikurs, who identified four goals of children's misbehavior: attention, power, revenge, and avoidance of failure. And based on my experience--as a teacher, sports coach, instructional coach, school leader, and parent--these are indeed main motives of children's misbehavior.

I've provided illustrations in previous posts that can help you identify three of these four motives--attention, power, and avoidance of failure--along with suggestions for addressing them proactively. Still, kids are going to misbehave at times no matter how proactive you are, so be sure to determine why they're misbehaving before you decide what to do about it. To discipline students before diagnosing the causes of their behavior would be like operating on patients before diagnosing the causes of their symptoms.

Image provided by Phillip Martin with permission

Posted by David Ginsburg at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's common knowledge that people can learn as much from their mistakes as anything. And yet traditional teaching methods often deny students the chance to learn from their mistakes by preventing them from making mistakes.

In social studies and science, for example, a lot of teachers tell students how to scale and label their axes when plotting data on a line graph. This prevents students from mistakenly assigning the dependent variable to the x-axis and the independent variable to the y-axis, or running out of room on their paper by going with ones or tens for their scales instead of hundreds or thousands.

Setting students up for success like this may seem like the right thing to do. After all, why let kids experience the frustration of botching something when you can prevent it? Here's why: such frustration is a precursor to deep, lasting learning. That's right, students' grasp of new concepts and skills is often better when they struggle through the process of learning those concepts and skills than when teachers error-proof that process.

I first noticed this in the context of graphing when a teacher did not error-proof the process, and many students placed Time on the y-axis of their Time-Distance graphs. But after lively discussion and debate, all students agreed that time belonged on the x-axis. More important, they understood why it belonged there.

The same goes for other skills such as writing. Students are more likely to become better writers when they get specific feedback about their writing than when teachers show them in general terms what good writing looks like. I'm reminded of a student who couldn't get why active voice is more powerful than passive voice until her teacher pointed out examples within that student's own writing.

Helping students troubleshoot their errors like this should be a primary role of every teacher. There's nothing to troubleshoot, though, if kids never run into trouble. Lesson planning should thus be more about anticipating students' errors and preparing to help them learn from those errors than trying to develop presentations that prevent all errors. Provide students activities that involve applying information, and be ready to help them when they get tripped up.

Another way of thinking about this is reflected in the common distinction in recent years between "sage on stage" (i.e., lecturer) and "guide on the side." And with students' ever-increasing fingertip access to information, there's an ever-decreasing need for us to be the source of their information. Still, just because students can get information doesn't mean they'll know what to do with it. The classroom must therefore be a place where students have regular opportunities to learn by using--and yes, misusing--that information.

In other words, a place where they can learn from one of life's greatest teachers: mistaiks.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I couldn't have been more relieved when winter break arrived my first year as a teacher. Two weeks of R & R. No lessons to plan. No papers to grade. And most of all, no kids to clash with.

My break got off to a blissful start. I slept late, worked out, and spent time with family and friends. But after a few days, I became preoccupied with one thought: each day that passed was one less day until I'd have to return to my chaotic classroom. My restful break had suddenly become a restless one.

I wallowed in despair for a day or two before concluding there was only one way to alleviate the dread I felt about returning to my classroom: make sure I'd be returning to a different classroom. My time off could no longer just be about rest and relaxation. I would also have to engage in another kind of R & R: Reflection and Regrouping.

I started by reading the journal I had been keeping since September. It was painful to relive day upon helpless day of classroom chaos, including the time I was decked trying to break up a fight. But it was also productive. As I wrote in my first post on this blog, owning your classroom woes is the first step toward overcoming them. And it was during that first winter break when I began to see my role in various classroom problems and find solutions to them.

I've shared many of those problems and solutions in previous posts. But more important than the actual changes I made are the process that led to those changes (Replacing Classroom Chaos With Control) and the protocols for implementing them (Rolling Out Classroom Changes). And even more relevant to my main point here was the timing of such changes.

A lot of people think it's important for teachers to be reflective, and I agree. But who has the time, energy, or focus to reflect and regroup in meaningful ways when you're teaching all day and grading papers all night? The best time to reflect and regroup is when you're away from the daily grind and can think with a clear mind.

A lot of people also think it's futile to make classroom changes mid-year. In fact, I often hear teachers say they "can't wait until next year" to do something differently. But rather than think of September as next year, think of January as next year, since the first day back after break can feel like a new year for students and teachers alike. Approach the first day back as though the slate is clean, and kids will respond accordingly.

So, whether you need to refine your practice or completely regroup like I did as a first-year teacher, take time over the holidays to ensure your classroom is a better place when you go back. And you may have a better break as a result, since it's hard to rest or relax if you're dreading having to return to the classroom.

Best wishes for R & R and R & R over the holidays, and a happy new year!

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Great teachers maintain control of their classrooms. They do not, however, control their students. In fact, show me a teacher who tries to control students, and I'll show you a classroom that's out of control.

One way many teachers try to control students is through disciplinary rules and punitive consequences for breaking those rules. Yet just as harmful as teachers' efforts to control students' behavior are their efforts to control students' thoughts. Some examples:

• The early childhood teacher who told a student to redo his drawing because "this looks nothing like an elephant."


• The science teacher who insisted on being a fountain--rather than a facilitator--of knowledge, and wouldn't let students form hypotheses, let alone test them out.


• The math teacher who told students, "You could do it that way, but the way I showed you is much better."


• The art teacher who cultivated conformity rather than creativity by telling students, "Everyone's should look like Angela's--it's awesome," as they made models of dinosaurs.


• The special ed teacher who persisted in giving students clues despite their protests that they didn't want any help.


• The literature teacher who shot down students' answers after asking why they thought the author chose a particular setting. (The same teacher later admonished students for not participating in the discussion: "How come no one is raising their hands?")


• The social studies teacher who twisted students' comments during a discussion of the pros and cons of different forms of government, so that they were aligned with his views.


• The 2nd grade teacher who refuted rather than respected students' complaints that a book she read to them was boring: "It's a great story. You must not have been paying attention."

And fifteen minutes or so into each of these classes, most students had either checked out or were acting out--as I expected, since these teachers told me ahead of time that they were having lots of behavior problems. But most of those problems disappeared once teachers saw the connection between their efforts to control students' thinking and students' misbehavior. (This happened for me as a teacher too after I made the same connection based on students' feedback about my chaotic first-year classroom.)

Does this mean refraining from trying to control kids is all it takes to maintain control of your classroom? Not at all. There are several components of classroom management, and a breakdown in any one of them can cause classroom chaos. But no matter how organized and efficient you are, sooner or later students are going to withdraw or be disruptive if you try to control them in ways like I've described above.

Make no mistake: great teachers provide students the structure they need to thrive. But they also give them room to be themselves and think for themselves within that structure. In short, great teachers empower children rather than overpower them.

Image provided by Phillip Martin with permission

Posted by David Ginsburg at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Like a lot of teachers, I believed at first that attention-seeking students needed attitude adjustments. So when kids acted out, I not only punished them but also preached to them about changing their attitudes. But nothing changed until I concluded that the best way to modify someone else's behavior is to modify your behavior. And the behavior of mine most in need of a change related to what I gave attention to and how I gave attention to it.

In particular, I needed to start focusing my attention on constructive behavior at the expense of disruptive behavior rather than the other way around. I shared several ways to do this in previous posts (Responding--or NOT Responding--to Misbehavior and Let Kids Express Themselves Rather Than Exasperate You), and here are a few more:

Give attention to attention givers. Students who act inappropriately do indeed deserve attention, since acting out can be a sign that children need help. But they don't deserve attention at the expense of students who are acting appropriately. So, as I've written before, unless it's a fire that needs to be put out now, either ignore it--which can often extinguish it--or address it at a more opportune time. Sometimes, however, even though you may ignore students' behavior, some of their classmates may indulge it. It often helps in such cases to focus your attention on the attention givers rather than the attention seekers. Talk to students one on one about the consequences of letting someone else take them off their games, and collaborate with them on strategies for staying focused on learning. I've been in many classrooms where students' inappropriate behavior subsided once their classmates ignored it. No audience, no antics.




Leverage all available attention. Attention is attention, and since there's only one of you and 30 or so students, be sure to give kids opportunities to get their attention needs met from each other--in constructive ways, of course. This is one of many benefits of students collaborating in small groups, as illustrated by my attention-seeking sneezing student, James, who had an "allergic" reaction when I didn't call on him during whole-group instruction but was symptom-free when he worked with classmates in small groups.




Communicate non-verbally. The more you're able to meet students' attention needs with actions rather than words, the more orderly your classroom. A smile, a scowl, a thumbs-up, a thumbs-down, a raised eyebrow, a note, close proximity to students needing redirection or assistance--just a few of many non-verbal ways to give students attention without any disruption.

There's no way around it: all children need and deserve attention. And how you manage a classroom full of kids vying for attention can make or break your overall effectiveness as a teacher. So if students aren't acting the way you want them to, pay attention to what you're paying attention to and how you're paying attention to it. You may discover what I did after reflecting on my frustrating first year in the classroom: it wasn't that students needed an attitude adjustment; I needed an attention adjustment.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When I worked in business, managers--not the people they supervised--decided who would work together on a project. This made sense, since they were in the best position to objectively determine which staff members would provide the right combination of skill, teamwork, and other qualities to ensure a successful project.

The same goes for the classroom where teachers are in the best position to ensure all students are set up for success when they work in small groups. That's why it's better for you to assign students to groups than let students choose groups themselves--even in homogeneous classes, since you never want to risk some kids being more or less sought after by their classmates than others.

Setting students up for success also means you must assign them to groups strategically rather than randomly (e.g., having students count off by fives, and forming groups by their numbers). Start by identifying the factors for which you want to ensure balance, then divide students into groups accordingly. If, for example, peer tutoring is a purpose of your groups, be sure each group has at least one "go-to" person in it, with other students reflecting a range of academic needs. Other possible factors include gender, race, ethnicity, attendance (if you teach at a school with high truancy rates, as I did), and behavior.

Speaking of behavior, some teachers--including me early on--think it's better to isolate all the "bad" kids in one group rather than assign them to different groups, where they might drag the rest of the class down. But until you understand why kids are misbehaving, it's hard to know how they're going to act from one situation to the next. And since many students misbehave because they want attention or don't understand something, being in a group with conscientious classmates is often just what they need--a chance for them to rise up rather than drag others down.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 8:49 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Note to readers: With legislators considering the future of NCLB, I feel compelled to share some thoughts on this from my experience as an urban teacher and school leader. So, here's my first post on policy rather than practice:

No Chance for Latinos and Blacks. That's what came to mind for me when I first heard about NCLB, and that's what still comes to mind nearly ten years later.

I'm referring in particular to at-risk Latino and African American public school students like those I taught in Chicago. And though I had few students from other ethnic/racial groups, my thoughts here certainly apply to them too. But don't get me wrong. I've never believed anyone intended to enact a law that would hurt many of the very children it purportedly helps. Too often, however, there's a difference between intent and effect, and there was no doubt in my mind that NCLB would indeed leave many kids behind.

The reason for this was that NCLB's most significant implication for state and local policymakers, school leaders, and teachers--pressure to raise Math and Reading standardized test scores--was already in place in the Chicago Public Schools when I arrived there in 1993. And it was clear to me then, as it is even clearer to me now, that many kids are hurt more than they're helped by the prevailing responses to such pressure.

Much has been written about many of those responses including replacing rich curriculum with test prep; cutting back art, music, and foreign language; cutting back recess and physical education; cutting back social studies and science; violating test administration procedures (i.e., cheating); watering down high-stakes tests; and lowering minimum test score proficiency requirements. But here are a few less publicized responses:

• cutting back writing (forget about the three Rs--in many schools there are now only two)
• using extrinsic motivators--from rewards to threats--to try to get students to do their best on a test
• deciding whether or not to expel delinquent students based on their likelihood to achieve proficient test scores
• providing tutoring and other individualized services for on-the-bubble students who were just short of a proficient score the previous year, while neglecting the most deficient and most advanced students
• preventing students from taking advanced classes if the content wouldn't be on the test
• investing in technology but only using it for test prep
• enabling students' self-defeating behavior
• holding teachers accountable for results without providing them the support they need to achieve those results

How do I know such responses to test score pressure have been a disservice to children? Well, the negative effects on kids of many of those responses are certainly well documented. Yet even more compelling for me is what I've seen and what students have said to me. Students like dozens of 8th graders who've been denied their chance--really their right, as civil rights leader and educator Bob Moses would say--to take Algebra in 8th grade, and thus denied their chance to enter high school on an AP track in math. The rationale for this? Algebra wouldn't be on the test. Never mind that these students had already mastered what would be on the test. "Another year of review can't hurt them," I recall one administrator saying.

And students like Lakisha (not her real name) who entered my classroom more than three years below grade level in math--based on test scores and her initial performance in class. But seven months and lots of hard work later, Lakisha was performing almost at grade level--again, based on her performance in class and her score on that spring's standardized test.

Lakisha came to my room in tears the day those scores were released. Tears of joy, I assumed, until she said, "I'm going to be held back, Coach G," citing the fact that, despite her lofty leap, she was still ½ year behind where she should have been. "Who told you that?" I asked. "Everyone," she replied, and then told me about a meeting before the test where school administrators said students would be retained if their scores were below grade level.

Whether students who score below grade level should in fact be held back is a topic for another discussion. What mattered in this case was that no such retention policy existed, and Lakisha was not only promoted but was assured of being promoted all along. What, then, would have compelled school leaders to use a scare tactic that caused a student to feel deflated when she should have been floating on air? Once again, pressure to raise test scores.

Do I condone this and other responses to test score pressure? No, but having experienced this pressure as both a teacher and school leader, I can relate to feeling like you have to put scores ahead of students. At the same time, I've worked with many urban educators--at district and charter schools alike--who've responded to test score pressure in ways that haven't just kept at-risk youth from being left behind, but have helped them get ahead. Educators like Chicago's Lake View High School Math Chair Steve Starr, his predecessor Rich Kaplan, and others whose dedication and belief in students--and courage to shun test prep in favor of college prep--have contributed to hundreds of Lake View students completing AP Calculus the past several years.

Ah, but therein lies one of the most glaring signs of NCLB missing the mark: the fact that doing what's right for students is now seen as courageous rather than compulsory. Does this mean we should forget about school accountability? Not at all. But as long as the focus of such accountability is solely on outcomes--and not also on evidence-based, educationally sound processes for achieving those outcomes--we'll continue to have a system where educators are overstressed and students are underserved.

In other words, a system that provides no chance for millions of children--Latinos, Blacks, and others.

Posted by David Ginsburg at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend