High Expectations Teaching AESA Annual Conference San Antonio, Texas November 30, 2017 Presenter: Jon Saphier
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50 Ways to Get Students to Believe in Themselves and Take Ownership of their Learning or How to do Attribution Retraining I. Verbal behaviors and teacher choice of language in daily interaction: 1. Calling on students 2. Responses to student answers --Sticking 3. Giving help THESE 9 ARE HOW WE 4. Changing attitudes towards errors DO ATTRIBUTION --Persevere and Return 5. Giving tasks and assignments NOT INNATE ABILITY 6. Feedback according to criteria for success with encouragement and precise diagnostic guidance 7. Positive framing of re-teaching 8. Tenacity when students don t meet expectations: pursuit and continued call for high level performance 9. Pushback on fixed mindset language and student helplessness RETRAINING: IT S EFFORT, II. Regular classroom mechanisms for generating student agency: 10. Frequent quizzes and a flow of data to students 11. Student Self-Corrections/Self-Scoring 12. Student Error Analysis 13. Regular Re-teaching, 14. Required Retakes and Re-do s w/ Highest Grade 15. Cooperative Learning Structures and teaching of group skills 16. Student feedback to teacher on pace or need for clarification 17. Reward System for Effective Effort and Gains 18. Structures for Extra help 19. Student goal setting All Observable in Classrooms III. Daily instructional strategies from clarity: 20. Communicating objectives in student friendly language and unpacking them with students 21. Clear and accessible criteria for success, developed with students 22. Exemplars of products that meet criteria for success 23. Checking for Understanding 24. Making Students Thinking Visible 25. Frequent Student Summarizing (cont. next page) 1
IV. Explicitly teaching students: 26. Effective Effort Behaviors 27. Student Self-evaluation of Effective Effort 28. Learning, Study and Other Strategies of Successful Students 29. Attribution Theory & Brain Research V. Opportunities for choice and voice 30 Stop my teaching 31. Student generated questions and Constructivist Teaching 32. Negotiating the rules of the classroom game. 33. Teaching students the principles of learning 34. Learning Style 35. Non-reports & Student Experts 36. Culturally relevant teaching and Personal Relationship Building 37. Student-led parent conferences VI. School-wide policies and practices for: 38. Hiring teachers 39. Assignment of teachers 40. Personalizing knowledge of and contact with students 41. Scheduling 42. Grouping 43. Content-focused teams that examine student work in relation to their teaching 44. Reward system for academic effort and gains 45. Push, support, and extra help (Hierarchy of Intervention) VII. Programs that enable students to value school and form a peer culture that supports academic effort: 46. Quality after-school programs and extra-curricula activities 47. Building identity and pride in belonging to the school 48. Creating a vision of a better life attainable through learning the things school teaches 49. Forming an image of successful people who look like them and value education 50. Building relations with parents through home visits and focus on how to help 2 (cont. next page)
We do not, however, take on any of these 50 places with commitment unless we conceive of our job description is a certain way. The Bottom Line of Effort Based Ability The ability to do something competently anything mathematics, racecar driving, dancing, public speaking is primarily determined by effective effort and your belief that you can get proficient at it. Smart is something you can get. The bell curve of ability is wrong. Even what we call intelligence is malleable. Thus our work as educators, in fact a major part of it for some students, is: 1. to convince them they can grow their ability at academics 2. to show them how and 3. to motivate them to want to. My job is to give students belief, confidence, tools, and desire. Give students the belief that effort can grow the ability to do well at academics. ( Smart is something you can get. ) Help them develop the confidence that they already have enough brain power to do rigorous work at high standards if the learn effective effort. Teach them the tools for exerting effective effort. Get them to care enough to want to. (cont. next page) 3
1. Identify which script conveys positive expectations and which negative expectations. 2. Analyze which words or phrases support your conclusions and explaining the effect of these words. SCRIPT 1 STUDENT: I can t do number 4. TEACHER: What part don t you understand? STUDENT: I just can t do it. TEACHER: Well, I know you can do part of it, because you ve done the first three problems correctly. The fourth problem is similar but just a little harder. You start out the same, but then you have to do one extra step. Review the first three problems, and then start number 4 again and see if you can figure it out. I ll come by your desk in a few minutes to see how you re doing. SCRIPT 2 STUDENT: I can t do number 4. TEACHER: You can t? Why not? STUDENT: I just can t do it. TEACHER: Don t say you can t do it. We never say we can t do it. Did you try hard? STUDENT: Yes, but I can t do it. TEACHER: Well, you did the first three problems. Maybe if you went back and worked a little longer you could do the fourth problem too. Why don t you work at it a little more and see what happens? 4
High Expectations Teaching High Expectations Teaching is about getting underperforming, discouraged students to believe in themselves and act effectively from that belief. This is something we can accomplish, even for children in extremely difficult life circumstances. 10 Places Where High Expectations Teaching Shows Up and 50 Ways to Make it Happen 1. Verbal Behaviors 2. Mechanisms for Agency 8. Personal Relationship Building 3. No Secrets Teaching 4. Direct teaching of Effective Effort & Strategies 5. Choice and Voice* 6. Policies and Procedures 7. Engagement with Families and Community *9. Culturally Relevant Instruction 10. Teacher Efficacy "I can actually do this for kids!" The seven places we act are surrounded by three needed ongoing commitments: 8) to build relationships with students, 9) to design culturally relevant instruction and 10) to believe in ourselves: we really can do this! 5
For Effort Based Ability... SAY IT 1. Develop a short stump speech and some compact statements you believe in so you can speak convincingly to the issue 2. Use rhetoric that does not stifle opposition or expression of disbelief. You have to keep the door open to dialog 3. Have a quote or paragraph about You can do it and It s effort that counts in every parent newsletter home, including class newsletters. 4. Talk about the significance of effort-based ability in opening of school speech to staff 5....also in back-to-school night welcome speech to all parents 6. Post posters that list the attributes of effective effort in the halls or other appropriate places 7. Get your leadership team on board by putting this topic on the agenda of every meeting, even if only a check item when you go around the table: What have you seen? What have you or your team members done? 8. Middle school and high school site visits for groups of 6th graders and 9th graders to mentors in the community who testify to the role of education in their success. Show how literacy and math skills are used in the workplace (see American Diploma Project). MODEL IT 1. Teach a class in growth mindset to a group of children yourself 2. Evaluate teachers on sending the four messages and using the 11 arenas 3. Model your own openness to taking risks and making and correcting errors by sharing when this is happening with staff in your presence 4. Be seen and heard in one classroom every day talking the talk of effort with one particular student about something they re working on 5. Let others see and hear you learning something new. I m on the learning curve with... 6 (cont. next page)
ORGANIZE IT 1. Have a staff development day for all staff or team leaders on History of Intelligence, the Bell Curve, and Effort Based Ability with convincing data bout the malleability of intelligence. 2. Examine test/retest/retake policy for grading in grade level or subject teams. 3. Identify high risk incoming 9th graders or incoming 6th graders for accelerated math course with extended calendar pick teachers to teach these children who are most committed to effort based ability extra budget for them or stipends. 4. Required after school homework study hall to do tomorrow s homework for those kids who didn t do today s homework. 5. Form a curriculum committee to develop a curriculum for how to teach kids effective effort 6. Do staff development on the 11 arenas or with the TESA program 7. Create ways to acknowledge/reward children who persevere and correct the errors (e.g., self-correcting from answer books after homework is certified as complete, and writing about what they have now figured out.) 8. Have teachers read High Expectations Teaching (Saphier, 2017) and discuss. Start follow-up study group of teachers where people share on-going experiments with attribution retraining and getting a child to change their stereotype of themselves. 9. Train parent volunteers and aides in responding to student answers, handling errors, and giving help (the 9 Verbal Behaviors.) 10. Not yet periods in middle school and high school where students receive intensive tutoring in concepts not yet mastered. Children who nominate themselves for these periods get reward for attending each of five sessions or have them after school with aides and volunteers. PROTECT IT 1. At budget time, put a fence around resources going to support growth mindset effort based ability structures. REWARD IT 1. A reward for children nominated by their teachers for demonstrating effective effort Pizza with the principal (or something that fits the child s culture) High school off campus privileges or some other privilege for academic improvement (not same as honor roll) 7
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