Look at what students are doing. Even when you can't see them.

This is a story about looking at the wrong thing.  

In a recent coaching cycle with a teacher, we set out to examine- and improve- student engagement in a high school math class.  Hybrid and remote instruction had supplanted the usual back-and-forth energy of learning math together, with a grid of silent black boxes.  The fatigue of trying to keep up the energy of class, when all that energy seemed to go one way, was a stark contrast to this teacher’s typically strong rapport with students. 

Like so many secondary teachers teaching remotely, we had to ask ourselves if students were logged in, but checked out. 

Fans of Diane Sweeney’s excellent body of work around student-centered coaching will know that I was breaking a cardinal rule of coaching.  Committing to behavioral goals with students is generally frowned upon in instructional coaching literature.  “We worry that if we isolate and coach into behavior, then we may end up looking at things like time-on-task rather than the learning that occurred,” writes Sweeney in her 2017 book, Student-Centered Coaching: The Moves. A focus on what students are learning should take precedence over behavior or compliance.  The argument here is sound, and one that I normally adhere to.  But this is not a normal school year.  

When a teacher cannot see or hear his students, suggesting a focus on a standards-based learning target instead of engagement feels out of touch with an honest and immediate need.  Our question of engagement stemmed equally from a desire to move students’ learning forward, and exhaustion from being a one-person show.

Without students putting forth something during class, how do you know they’re with you?  In a hybrid or remote learning environment, it is difficult to know where students truly are in their learning. 

Apps like PhotoMath, and the ease with which students can copy and paste their friends’ work into their own homework assignments, cast doubt on the authenticity of student work.  And that’s if they are turning in assignments.  How students engage during class is pivotal to getting insight into their learning.   Hence our work on improving student engagement. 

One practice I adhere to when I’m coaching is to hone in on what the students are doing, not the teacher.  If our goals are to be student-centered, then evidence we begin with must always come from the students.  Exit tickets, think-pair-shares, checks for understanding, and micro-assessments during class, are sharp ways to identify misconceptions and gather evidence of students’ progress toward learning goals (Sweeney, 2021).  It also takes pressure off the teacher to feel like they need to “perform” a perfect lesson while the class grows accustomed to having another adult in the room.  As teachers, when there is a second set of eyes to inspect what students are doing during class, we often catch things we couldn't notice while we were writing notes on the whiteboard or cuing up our next discussion question.

Spoiler alert: my lofty intent to watch only what students were doing in a virtual math class was hilarious.  The first class I attended, there was literally nothing to see.  Every camera was off.

Students’ willingness to speak up improved over time- but it wasn’t the only story to be told.

Determined to fulfill my duty as baseline data collector, I took copious notes on what I could observe.  Every time a student said something or used Zoom’s chat function during class, I recorded it.  After our first few class sessions, the teacher and I discussed the data.  The results put numbers behind what he already felt: the same 2-3 students were likely to be the only ones to speak up during a 48-minute class.  Occasionally a few others would send him a private message, so that they could answer or ask a question without being seen by their peers.  

No wonder this talented, veteran teacher insisted we focus on engagement as our problem of practice.  If we measured engagement by students’ willingness to speak or use chat during class, then we had nowhere to go but up.  

This is probably a good time to remind you, I was looking at the wrong thing.

Hatching a plan

To explain why participation was so important, we included a mini-lesson about how the brain works.

We began our work with students by making our interests crystal clear to them.  Hattie’s visible learning research confirms that clarity has a .75 effect size on student learning- in other words, it can double a student’s learning over the course of a year.  Additionally, the NCBI has published fascinating brain imaging that reveals how much more of a learner’s brain is activated when she is stopped to ask & answer questions periodically during a lesson (2009).  

When students stop to ask and answer questions, more parts of the brain are activated. Images adapted from NCBI.

We wanted students to know that the more they actively engage during class, the more likely they are to learn.  Fortunately, the students in this math class were used to seeing clear learning intentions and success criteria for each unit in their learning.  Adding an additional set of success criteria, to clearly define engagement, helped us to be up-front with students about what we were going for in each class session.

Measuring success

Every class I attended, I marked how many times each student spoke or used the chat function during class.  As frequently as we could, the teacher and I reminded students of our goal and let them know how they were doing as a class. 

“Four of you spoke up today, keep it going!” and similar cheers let the students know that participation was, yes, still a thing.

We also tried different ways to solicit student input.  We noticed that calling on students by name worked 90% of the time, while asking for volunteers rarely yielded anything significant.  Calling on students by name might seem like a “well-duh” approach, but we didn’t give that technique a concerted effort until we read Jennifer Gonzalez’s aptly titled blog post, “When you get nothing but crickets”.  Asking for volunteers was a testament to the teacher’s admirable capacity for wait time.  Calling on students by name, however, made them far more likely to make their voices heard. 

We also noticed that, the lower the stakes, the more likely students were to answer a question.  

When I say low stakes, I mean really, really low. A student who was reluctant to answer a question like, “Will this integer be a negative or a positive?”, was very likely to answer a question like, “Hey Johnnie, what number on our assignment are you working on right now?”

Those kinds of ultra low-stakes questions worked, but they didn’t feel great. 

They let us know that students could hear us, something we knew not to take for granted when we can’t see or hear them.  But they did little to strengthen relationships or give us feedback into the students’ learning.  Little by little, however, we saw the numbers of students who were willing to say something during class go up.

A quiet narrative develops

While we documented the progress of students growing incrementally more comfortable with talking in class, I also kept a space for notes at the bottom of our data log.  The space was reserved to jot down those “other” student actions that were interesting or noteworthy, but that didn’t necessarily fit our criteria for engagement.  Over the course of two months, a quiet pattern started to emerge.  Though they were reluctant to speak up in class, students were engaging with the material during class.  A lot.

Remember when I said I was looking at the wrong thing? 

On their best days, nearly half of the class said something- even if it was just to confirm they had a pulse.  But how many of them were trying, failing, and trying again on virtual platforms?  Close to 85%.  

The quiet pattern that was unfolding while we were looking- begging- for students to speak out, is that they were engaging in deliberate practice, responding to teacher feedback, and correcting mistakes during class. 

They were doing what it takes to learn.  They were just doing it very quietly.

The “other” notes during our coaching cycle revealed that students were engaging with online platforms, even when they were afraid to speak up in class.

 The teacher I worked with employed a variety of virtual platforms for his instruction.  Students used Desmos, Pear Deck, and Kahoot! as commonly as they used pencil and paper.  Unlike pencil and paper, however, we could immediately see how all students were interacting with math problems.  Not only that, students immediately saw how their peers were answering questions- usually anonymized- when the teacher shared his screen with the class. 

The myth of “I’m the only one not getting this” is easily toppled when the eager students, who’ve already mastered the content, are not the only ones in class showing their work.

The social element of learning, a shared give-and-take of ideas between participants, was alive and well, if you knew where to look for it.  Often, when using Desmos or Pear Deck, the teacher would pull a student example, and show the class a successful or error-driven problem.  Immediately we’d see other students correcting their own work within the activity.  They were not only with us, they were responding to in-the-moment feedback.

Psychological Safety

Humans read one another naturally, by reacting to the subtle cues of facial expressions and body language, by hearing not only what we say but how we say it.  It feels good.  It feels normal.  We were so hungry to drag reluctant students into that dynamic, that it nearly robbed us of pleasant surprises.

But if we are truly committed to analyzing our impact on learning, we know that student behavior can be misleading.  Students are very good at acting like they are learning- they will write notes when we ask them to write notes, put a book in front of their faces when we ask them to read.   Sometimes these are reliable indicators that real learning is occurring, sometimes they are not.  Graham Nuthall, in his book The Hidden Lives of Learners, describes this as the reciprocal game: 

Students “are excellent at knowing what signs the teacher is looking for, and making sure the teacher sees those signs”  (Nuthall, 2007). 

Many of our students will smile and nod when they understand a concept, and when they don’t.  

When reflecting on our coaching cycle, I couldn’t help but consider the concept of psychological safety.  One of the most significant challenges a teacher can face is creating a culture where open dialogue, and even failure, is embraced as a key element of learning.  I’d argue that this is particularly difficult with teenagers, since their sense of self is so keenly shaped by peer status and perception.  Coupled with an abrupt shift to students learning from their bedrooms, it is no wonder students don’t want to risk speaking up.  

In her book The Fearless Organization, Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson points out that successful, innovative teams owe much of their success to a sense of psychological safety.  It turns out, even adults will remain quiet to avoid rocking the boat.  Those organizations who create psychologically safe spaces to tip that balance, are the ones that outperform their peers. Professionals in the workplace often silence over voice, just like our students. However, high-achieving organizations embrace strategies that normalize- even celebrate- critical discourse.  Mistakes are welcome, and even celebrated, as a way to improve.  Teams at Google, Pixar, and the most successful NICU teams, strategically use systems that make open and honest communication feel safe. Isn’t that what we want for our classrooms?

This feeling of safety might be why our students were so ready to engage in online platforms.  They could try and make mistakes without fear of being wrong, or being labeled a “try-hard” by their classmates.  Better yet, as they worked, their teacher received valuable feedback regarding where students were in their learning.  When calling on students to help solve problems in a traditional manner, he could gauge the learning of one student at a time- if she was willing to answer.  But by using the quieter, broader scale of virtual tools, we quickly saw where many students were struggling or succeeding at once. They might not have opened their mouths, but they were saying plenty.  

This kind of engagement is not what we set out to measure or improve.  We wanted class-wide banter, dialogue, and a feeling of reciprocated energy.  That’s the kind of engagement that feels good to us as humans.  For the course of our coaching cycle, however, that’s not where our students were. 

We spent months trying to coax out signs of traditional engagement, and all the while students were engaging on their own terms. 

We saw evidence that they were with us, not just acting like they were with us, in ways we might have missed during in-person school.  What we saw clearly from our students, is that learning may be happening even if we don’t feel like it’s happening, and vice versa.  We can only know when we take pause to dig in to what students are doing while we’re busy teaching.  It’s a question of looking at the right thing. 

For Further Reading:

Edmondson, Amy.  The fearless organization.  Wiley, 2020.

Gonzalez, Jennifer. “When You Get Nothing But Crickets.” Cult of Pedagogy, 18 Aug. 2019, www.cultofpedagogy.com/crickets/. 

Nuthall, Graham.  The Hidden Lives of Learners.  NZCER Press, 2007.

Sweeney, Diane.  Student-Centered Coaching From A Distance.  Corwin, 2021.

Vannest, Jennifer J et al. “Comparison of fMRI data from passive listening and active-response story processing tasks in children.” Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI vol. 29,4 (2009): 971-6. doi:10.1002/jmri.21694

Negative Space, and What We're Missing Without It

Originally posted with love & polish by my colleagues at The Core Collaborative. Check them out here!

A simple graphic design term has consumed my thinking during teaching and coaching at a distance: negative space.  It’s something I first read about in White Space Is Not Your Enemy (Golombisky & Hagen, 2010), a title derived from a single, pertinent rule of design: empty space matters.  That’s because the “empty” portions of images are not empty at all.  These empty, or negative, spaces without text or images are what “help guide the viewer’s eye through the flow of the design.” (p. 37)  

The negative space surrounding images tells us where to look.

Nearly a year into distance learning, this simple rule of design makes an easy leap to metaphor: in teaching and instructional coaching, negative space matters.  

Negative space is all the “other stuff” we pay attention to when we interact with students.  It’s their body language, their tone of voice, where and when their eyes drift during practice and instruction. It’s the conversations they’re having with friends as they walk through the door.  These cues are essential to help teachers connect with learners, and shape the small moment-to-moment moves that make a classroom hum.  In my view from teaching at a distance, that negative space has never been more absent.

Modified image from "Spring 2012 Student Hackathon Coding" by hackNY is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

I began this school year at a new school, teaching a new class, from my living room.  My students, all high school English Learners who I had never met before, began the school year quietly, and often invisibly, as they Zoomed in and out their daily synchronous virtual classes.  The negative space I so frequently rely on to make connections with students- doodles on their backpacks, snickers at my corny jokes, facial expressions, who they’re chatting with as they walk into the room- did not accompany my teenagers into our virtual space.

My experience is not unique; in August the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 93% of households with school-age children participated in some form of distance learning.  In the springtime, when schools abruptly closed, many districts re-opened as virtual classrooms, to students who knew their teachers and vice versa.  This fall, however, teachers across the nation opened their virtual doors to young people they had never met and might not ever see.

In an interview with Brene Brown, writer Priya Parker describes the “disproportionate power of the mute button” as a contender we now must consider in virtual gatherings. 

It’s true.

Negative space tells us where to look. It also gives context.

If students don’t want to show themselves or speak in a virtual setting, we can’t force them to do so.  Many of the secondary teachers I work with report a familiar struggle: when students refuse to be seen or heard, it’s hard to know if they’re with us.  

If there was an easy trick to materialize all the negative space, or “soft information”, we’d be doing it already.  In the absence of an easy solution, it’s worth taking pause to name why what we can’t see is important. Student-to-teacher feedback and students’ sense of belonging are two vital elements of learning that are affected when we lose the negative space that our students usually bring with them. 

STUDENT-TO-TEACHER FEEDBACK 

In my work with teacher teams, we explore the research behind how and why to create a classroom culture that is rife with feedback for students.  John Hattie’s Visible Learning research confirms that feedback that is right on time, and right on target, can double the rate of learning (Hattie, 2012).  But what the research also reveals is the power of feedback that students give to their teacher.  This valuable input can “make visible” the points of confusion, or points of interest, that inform a teacher’s next moves.   Student-to-teacher feedback, writes Hattie, “is our starting point when determining the nature of our subsequent feedback to them,” (2018). 

We need their feedback just as much as they need ours. 

Now, with the value student-to-teacher feedback in mind, consider this: Our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text.  Consider the observational data that teachers typically process, just by looking around the room.  When half the class slumped in their chairs, losing interest, teachers know they need to throw in a quick joke or a brain break.  When the quietest students are scribbling down notes, we can see that they are with us even if they don’t volunteer to join the class discussion.  This is timely, specific feedback that teachers utilize to inform their work during lessons.  We process that information at lightning speed. 

In a distance learning scenario, there are still numerous ways we can solicit feedback from our students- but few yield the same immediacy as a quick look around the room.  Feedback in the form of chats, exit tickets, and surveys are informative for students to articulate, and for teachers to review.  However, I want to name what’s missing when we can’t gather quick, nonverbal information from our students.  The effectiveness of student-teacher-feedback is limited to asking the right questions and depending on all students- even the reluctant ones- to put forth their most honest answers.  It also requires that the teacher, already at maximum cognitive load from the demands of pandemic teaching, reads and processes students’ responses. Sometimes that can be done quickly, and in other situations it requires considerable time.  

The value of what we can easily garner when we read the room for  “negative space” is not to be taken for granted.

BELONGING 

Beyond informing instruction, negative space- what is communicated without saying anything- is essential to foster students’ sense of belonging.  I have watched my own elementary-aged children proudly show their favorite toys to their class on virtual “share day”.  In those endearing K-2 classes, students know what their classmates look like, and even what their living rooms look like. They watch each other sing along or struggle together with a math problem. This is not strictly academic information; what they take in when they see and do with their classmates signals that they belong together in the group.

High school students in my class, on the other hand, tend to hide their faces even when their cameras are on.  Instead of discussion, they are more likely to send a chat privately or keep their comments to themselves altogether.  This halts to the momentum of a class flow, but more importantly, it prohibits connection between students.  

Belonging enables us to feel good; it’s also essential for learning.

A November article in the New York Times cited a survey that revealed more than a quarter of teens felt disconnected from adults and peers at their school.  Consequently, the nation is seeing an increase of young people in emergency rooms with mental health emergencies.  In a virtual space, teens don’t necessarily see all the “other stuff”- the negative space- surrounding their peers that would normally give them something with which to build a bond.  The result is a mental sense of isolation that is exacerbated by their physical isolation.

I would argue that this is not for teachers’ lack of trying.  The adage, “They won’t care what you know until they know that you care,” has been circulating among educators for years.  Teachers want their students to feel like they belong.  We want to notice their haircuts, we want them to find out what they have in common with classmates, to feel empowered to bring their most authentic selves to class.  It’s hard to coax this out of a group of learners who, when given the choice, will choose silence over vulnerability any day.

Creating a sense of belonging feels right as humans, and it has academic implications as well.  Floyd Cobb, in referencing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, writes, “Maslow’s point is that we need to belong in order to achieve.  Our self-worth rises when we are grounded in community.” (2019)  In other words, students need to feel like they are an important part of their community in order to fully realize their academic potential. 

If the years ahead reveal significant drops in student achievement, we will need to consider it an impact not only of learning lost due to wifi connectivity, but also a population starved of authentic connections with teachers and peers.

When every member of a community is silent and represented only by a name in the bottom of a dark, vacant box, it requires significant imagination to ground oneself as an important member of the group.  The “empty” space of a reciprocated smile or a favorite band that could normally be students’ entryway into belonging, is on mute.

As with so many problems, the first step to a solution is naming what we’re dealing with.  In naming what is lost when we lack negative space, perhaps we could nudge ourselves to examine what we, as teachers, are holding ourselves accountable for- and what things are ultimately out of our control.  Better yet, perhaps it can present a clear angle for creative approaches.  We need every bit of feedback students can give us, and they need to know that they belong.  Resilient teachers and students are showing daily that they will keep coming to school while we learn how to do best by each other.  That, I’d say, is a positive.

References/for further reading:

Cobb, Floyd, and John Krownapple. Belonging through a Culture of Dignity: the Keys to Successful Equity Implementation. Mimi & Todd Press, 2019. 

Goldberg, Emma. “Teens in Covid Isolation: 'I Felt Like I Was Suffocating'.” The New York Times, 12 Nov. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/health/covid-teenagers-mental-health.html. 

Golombisky, Kim. White Space Is Not Your Enemy : a Beginner's Guide to Communicating Visually through Graphic, Web & Multimedia Design. Amsterdam ; Boston :Focal Press/Elsevier, 2010.

Hattie, John.  Visible learning for teachers : maximizing impact on learning.  Routledge, 2012.

Hattie, John. and Clarke, Shirley.  Visible Learning: Feedback.  Routledge, 2019. 

“Imagery Vs. Text: Which One Does The Brain Prefer?” World Of Learning, www.learnevents.com/blog/2015/09/07/imagery-vs-text-which-does-the-brain-prefer/.

Trafton, Anne. “In the Blink of an Eye.” MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, news.mit.edu/2014/in-the-blink-of-an-eye-0116. 

The Three Places Your Success Criteria Should Go

In recent years, I’ve worked with numerous teachers and teacher teams who are challenging themselves to bolster clarity in their classrooms. They do so for good reasons. First, it’s grounded in research. John Hattie’s Visible Learning cites clarity as one of the most monumental influencers of student achievement (2012). Not only does clarity have the potential to significantly increase student learning, but it also carries over into other pedagogical “powerhouse factors” such as feedback and assessment-capable learners (Hattie, 2018). If I’ve dipped too deeply into the well of theoretical jargon, here it is more simply:

When students are clear on what it is they are supposed to learn, and what success looks like, they will learn more.

Another reason building clarity appeals to teachers is that it makes sense, and it feels doable. To borrow from Vygotsky, taking what are we already using in the classroom and refining it just a bit is well within our own zone of proximal development. It doesn’t require an advanced degree or a supplemental technology budget either. It simply requires a concerted effort to articulate what “good learning” looks like for any given subject. More importantly, it requires getting that articulation in front of the people actually doing the learning.

If there has ever been a time when we are aware of the value every second, it’s during our reduced instructional minutes of distance and hybrid learning. Trim the fat, and be as precise and concise as possible.

Clear learning intentions can be the first place we look to know what to keep, and what to discard in uncertain times. It makes sense for teachers and for students. So why do we get stuck?

We are pulled in so many directions in education- and often feel like we are moving so fast- that sometimes the only practice that’s consistent is taking attendance. And even that gets forgotten sometimes. Clarity, something that is impactful and straightforward, can take a back seat when a pacing calendar, grades, and emails are vying for our mental energy. (Are you with me on the emails? There are SO MANY!) “Do students know what they are supposed to be learning? How will they know when they’ve learned it?” can easily take a back seat to, “Will I get caught up today?”

One problem is that- even when we do hone in on clarity- it sometimes doesn’t get beyond the confines of our own teacher brains.

Our best efforts- mine included- fizzle out if they remain in the silos of our minds or just one lesson, “that one time I remembered to do it.” I have worked with teachers- fantastic ones- who, over the years, have confided that they meant to get clear learning intentions in front of their students. Or that they want to prioritize success criteria so that students feel like what they’re learning is attainable. Even that next time, they intend to use success criteria so that students can give each other feedback. Kudos to all of us who are marching alone, across the landscapes of our minds, into a silent battle for clarity! But you know what? That’s a really lonely journey if you’re the only one on the path. For clarity to truly flourish, it takes a village.

Clarity works best when it’s in three places: the teacher’s head, the students’ eyeballs, and in the company of trusted colleagues.

Developing success criteria might start as an independent activity, but it shouldn’t end there. Icon attribution: Matthew S. Hall, The Noun Project.

1. The Teacher’s Head

Maybe this is the easiest part, because it doesn’t require following a bell schedule or managing a classroom. Many of us are accustomed to turning over pedagogical problems in our minds like a Rubik’s cube, whether we are on the clock or not.

The internet is awash with templates and examples you can use. Some teachers prefer a list of skills students must demonstrate to reach success. My go-to is a three-column template I’ve adapted from work with the Hinge Education team, to ensure students have a clear path to surface, deep, and transfer- level learning.

If you’re new to writing out learning intentions, give yourself a time limit. This is not the Declaration of Independence; it’s a short list that will help you- and students- know what successful learning will look like. You are allowed to make it better while you work with students. Keep in mind the following questions, adapted from Rigorous PBL by Design (2017) and Clarity for Learning (2018):

1. Is this in student-friendly language?

2. What evidence could students use to show that they have learned?

3. What words will students need to know, to show evidence of their learning?

4. Is this free of context? (“Get an A on the test”, or “Complete this cool project”, or “Summarize Chapter 8” are examples of context. Keep it out.)

Getting success criteria in front of students, or co-creating success criteria with them, makes clarity a little messy and a lot more meaningful. Icon attribution: Prosymbols, The Noun Project.

2. The Students’ Eyeballs

This is where success criteria become equally powerful and messy. When students use success criteria to measure their own- ahem- success, the work really comes to life.

The first time I used success criteria with my students, I posted it in giant letters on my bulletin board. Every time we began an activity, I would walk over to the board and point to which success criteria we were aiming for with our work. It became a road map throughout our project and helped us understand why our activities were relevant. Consequentially, throughout that project, I found myself discarding built-in activities that I had done for years, because I realized they didn’t align with what we were trying to learn.

My students dragged the icons to represent where they were in their learning. At this point in my unit, most felt they were at a proficient (or deep) level of ability.

Using success criteria to orient students around what they’re learning- as I did my first time around- is a good start. It’s even stronger, however, when students can use the success criteria to see the progress in their own learning. Using success criteria to help learners articulate their progress can help take something abstract: “Where am I in my learning?”, and make it more concrete: “I can do the things listed at a level two, but there are a few more things I need to master to be at a level three.”

I’ve seen teachers print success criteria on a half sheet of paper, and periodically ask students to circle where they are on the paper. The same routine works using google docs; students can revisit a list of success criteria and highlight the parts they feel the’ve mastered, or even color code the areas where they are still struggling. In wiggly elementary classrooms, students enjoy moving sticky notes with their names on them, to pictures on a bulletin board that represent different success criteria. My current favorite is to open Pear Deck session with Google Slides, so that as a community of learners we can all see our progress. It works great virtually and in-person, and is linked here.

One of my most memorable high school teachers used to tell us, “The message is in the receiver.” It was an annoying truth to contest with as a teenager, but it comes to mind frequently as a teacher. If I’ve developed success criteria but my students never see it for themselves, or don’t really understand how it relates to learning, my message stopped short of being truly received.

All the answers are in the room. Icon attribution: Makim Kulikov, The Noun Project.

3. In the company of trusted colleagues

If “in your own head” is the easy part, and “in front of students’ eyes” is the messy part, then this is the juicy part. Is success measured in the same ways, between teachers who are teaching the same grade level and content area? Do we have a common (and safe) way to examine our impact on student learning?

Research suggests that, in many schools, the answer is no. Variability within schools is actually far greater than variability between different schools (Hattie, 2017). In other words, an outstanding argumentative essay in my class might be considered mediocre in my partner teacher’s class. But we were both teaching the same thing, and we both think we have high expectations for our students. Ouch.

Getting success criteria in front of a team of teachers- or, if you teach a class alone, in front of a colleague that you trust, is a strong way to draw on the collective wisdom of other professionals. It can also be totally scary. Asking the group, “Do these look right? Is it rigorous enough?”, requires vulnerability from the asking teacher or team of teachers. But it can also be a first step to creating a system with common definitions of success.

In What Works Best in Education: The Politics of Collaborative Expertise, Hattie writes, “Evaluating impact asks schools and systems to be clearer about what it means to be good at various disciplines, to be clearer about what a year’s progress looks like and to provide staff with collaborative opportunities to make these decisions.”

There is a clear value in bringing success criteria into the light, together. Teacher teams can develop their own efficacy when they see what is working and what isn’t. Understanding our impact can remain vague unless success criteria and students’ work are both present in our work as teams. They help us to see patterns, identify where students are struggling, and reflect on which interventions are working to bring our students closer to our shared definition of success.

If a team has developed success criteria together, then looking at student work has a new cornerstone around which the team can orient themselves. Not a standardized test, but a bar developed with your own real students in mind.

In the wake of constant changes, many teachers are investing their efforts into building clarity. Whether in traditional or distance learning, those efforts are worth it: the return on teachers’ investment is potential for significant learning. But those returns are even greater in the company of fellow learners. Let them in on the journey.

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Resources:

Almarode, J & Vandas, K. (2018). Clarity for Learning. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.

Hattie, John. (2012). Visible learning for teachers : maximizing impact on learning. London ; New York : Routledge

Hattie, John. (2015). What Works Best in Education: The Politics of Collaborative Expertise. London: Pearson.

Hattie, John. (2018). Visible Learning Feedback. [Webinar.] Corwin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfHQAQCAqtw

McDowell, Michael. (2017). Rigorous PBL by Design. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.

Can you remember 167 birthdays? Should you?

Like many teachers, I began my school year teaching completely remote. It means that the last week in August found me in my makeshift home office, performing wildly to a screenful of tiny black rectangles. It didn’t exactly feel like teaching- more like talking at and hoping deeply. The hard fact is that students who I have never met (and may never meet) in person don’t have to show me anything if they don’t want to. Evidence that they hear me, or that they understand, or even evidence that they have a face is entirely up to them. Online learning can leave us starved of the usual back-and-forth exchange of eye contact, small talk, and smiles that cement together a new relationship. And those relationships are really, really important.

This is not just a people-person’s issue. This is a learning issue. There is a large body of research connecting student-teacher relationships with the likelihood that students will learn. The research is not surprising, because it confirms what most of us have experienced in our own education: if you have a good relationship with your teacher, you’re more likely to learn with her. What is significant about the research is not that relationships have an impact on learning (thank you, edu-researchers, we knew that already), but how much of an impact relationships have on learning. Student-teacher relationships are a factor strong enough to cause students to learn more than they would in an average a year (Hattie, 2012), and relationships could even come close to doubling a student’s average rate of learning (Cornelius-White, 2007).

This understanding, coupled with the preponderance of audio delays, empty screens, and weak internet connections that plague my class meetings, has got me willing to do just about anything to produce a specific body of evidence for my students: evidence that I notice them and that they are important. An email wishing one of my students happy birthday will not directly cause learning. But it is an investment in relationship that is well-worth the 30 seconds it takes to send them a quick note. Plus, thanks to some clever finagling of a birthday spreadsheet, Google Calendar will to the bulk of the work for me. How excited was I when I figured out how to do this? I may have been giddy enough to gift birthday calendars to a handful of my colleagues, each with 167 of their student contacts pre-loaded. It is a seriously cool trick that can help keep you on top of your birthday game. Here’s how:

How to import student birthdays into your Google Calendar

1. Use this Google Sheet template.

You do the work on Sheet 1, and Sheet 2 will make the magic happen.

2. Fetch your data.

There are two ways to “fetch” the data you need, to fill in the sheet. Once you have the info you need, copy & paste your it into the spreadsheet template from Step 1.

• Google Form- Students can fill this out themselves. The Results spreadsheet will give you all the data you need. Pro: no fancy LMS footwork required. Con: Student typos could result in incorrect birth dates or email addresses.

• Aeries or other LMS: If you (or an administrator) can run a report that will give you all the information you need, let that system do the work for you. If your school uses Aeries, this query will do nicely: LIST MST PD TCH.TE SEC STU STU.LN STU.FN STU.BD STU.SEM IF TCH.TE = your last name

3. Get Sheet 2 just right.

Make sure that all student’s birth years have changed to your current school years, and that they match the month/year you’ll be in school. I like to random-check a few names/emails/birthdays on Sheet 2, to make sure they’re correct.

4. Download as CSV

Make sure you’re looking at Sheet 2 as you do this one. File> Download> comma-separated values (csv, current sheet).

5. Create new Google Calendar

By creating a new calendar in Google, you have something that you can change or delete to your heart’s content. If you decide you want to change your reminder settings, or remove it altogether to make room for a new roster of students, you can.

6. Import that beautiful new CSV.

Did you know you could do this? Oh, the possibilities!

7. Set notifications

I like setting my alerts for “0 days” before, at 7:30 a.m. That way alerts come just before my classes start, so I can add a happy birthday to my class agenda and send a quick email.

8. Be an everlovin’ birthday boss!

Get out there and make those kids feel extra special.

Are there other ways to do this? You bet. This is the route that did it for me. Hope it can help you, too!

References:

Cornelius-White, J.H. (2007). Learner-Centered Teacher-Student Relationships Are Effective: A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research, 77, 113 - 143.

Hattie, John.  (2012).  Visible learning for teachers : maximizing impact on learning.  London ; New York :  Routledge

A Grownups' Guide to Virtual Breakout Rooms

“Uh… what is it we’re supposed to be talking about?”

So begins so many of the Zoom breakout rooms I’ve been in. During the two seconds of cyber-nothingness when Zoom participants wait to land in their breakout rooms, short-term memory seems to take a vacation. I have a few theories about why this happens. It could be the abrupt shift from being a passive listener to part of a collaborative group. Or it could stem from a reluctance to sound too bold; asking the group what’s supposed to be talked about can be a signal that you’re open to conversation but don’t plan to dominate the virtual space. The explanation might also be a simple one: our minds were wandering just a minute before, and being thrown into a breakout room snapped us back into the present.

Something about this image seems to erase short term memory.

I’ve taken a personal interest in breakout rooms lately, both as a presenter and a participant. I was shuffled in and out of breakout rooms years before the pandemic during my time as an online graduate student, but those rooms were filled with a small group of adults I’d known for months. Recently, however, as Zoom rooms have replaced classrooms and large conference halls, I’ve noticed a wide range of routines and “flows” presenters use. There are some mistakes that are easy to avoid (I’ve made many of them), as well as some simple techniques that experts use to help guide the room. The best ones come from a group of professionals accustomed to problem-solving for group dynamics and maximum learning gains: teachers.

1. Repeat, repeat.

It’s a step that literally takes seconds. After participants are informed that they’re about to be placed in breakout rooms, tell them once again what it is they are being asked to discuss. That simple step will help support those participants who might be lost in thoughts about the last great thing they heard.

Just hearing breakout rooms is enough to alert Zoom participants that they’re about to move from passive to active role. But once the alarm bell has been sounded, it’s nice to hear once again what the alarm has been sounded for. And if you really want to tap into a set of skills the best teachers use, wrap it all up with, “What questions do you have before we join our breakout groups?” Here’s what it looks like: “We’ve been talking a lot about x. Now I’m going to put you in breakout rooms, and while you’re there, I’d like you to talk about y. So again, when you’re in you rooms, discuss these two questions about y. What questions do you have before we begin?” Taking time to repeat the prompt will provide much-needed clarity to participants.

2. Use a visual.

Let participants hear the prompt a second time, but let them see it too. Any teacher who has slugged her way through a credential program knows that the more ways learners encounter information, the more likely they are to remember it. (There are plenty of studies confirming the importance of multimodality in learning, this one from National Geographic is quite palatable.) One slide with big, clean letters will do the trick.

A simple visual will help participants mentally prepare for the breakout room.

Another approach to add is enabling participants to create their own visual. A presenter asked me to write down the discussion prompt in a workshop I recently attended, and I found that it was surprisingly calming to jot down the note on paper before we were put in breakout rooms. It gave me something to reference when I was thrust into a virtual space with strangers, and the time it took to write the question down also gave me a few seconds to think about how I might answer. Although the evidence is strictly anecdotal, the other people in my breakout room seemed to arrive with more calm and focus themselves, which made for a more productive conversation.

Finally, there are some savvy presenters out there who like to send a chat message to breakout rooms, showing the discussion prompt once more after breakouts have begun. Again, this method allows participants to see with their eyes what they’ve heard with their ears, and direct conversation to the intended purpose.

3. Be clear on time.

“How long does this have to be?” said every middle school student, since the invention of the constructed response in school.

“As long as it needs to be, to tell the whole story,” is a sufficient (and snarky) enough answer for essay writing. But in online discussions that will be force-quit after a certain period of time, it’s only fair to let participants know how much output they should be prepared for. In this case, being clear is being kind. Should each person in the breakout room be ready to explore and challenge their deepest thoughts on the subject, or is this just a three minute idea swap? Great presenters let their participants know about how long the breakout rooms will last. It’s a gracious way of setting expectations, to allow for adequate turn taking and expository thought.

4. Plant your debrief discussion.

This is something top-notch presenters and teachers do to both make sure learners feel supported, and also to build the foundation for a breakout debrief. It’s not uncommon to bring participants out of their breakout discussions to ask the whole group to reflect on the takeaways. Unfortunately, it’s also not uncommon for “Who would like to share…” to be met with deafening silence. I’ve observed master teachers, especially those who work with students with disabilities or language barriers, visit each group and plant a few promising volunteers before everyone reconvenes for a class discussion. It’s a technique that can easily be adapted to the virtual space.

During small group discussions in a school, ta teacher might join up with a group and say: “Group 4, I like the points you’re bringing up about the difficulty of recycling film plastic. Jasmine, when we come back together as a whole group, I’m going to ask you to share that with everyone. It’s such a great thought, I’d like the rest of the room to hear it.” That ensures that there will be contributions to the class debrief, and it also gives chosen students time to mentally prepare, and confidence that what they will say is worth sharing out. Sometimes a few of these plants are all it takes to nudge a more open whole-group discussion after breakouts.

Presenters can do exactly the same move in breakout rooms. Zoom has made it so easy to jump from one breakout room to another- it can help presenters support those small groups of participants in breakout rooms, and it can also help identify a few key contributors to the post-breakout whole group discussion.

5. Size matters.

In a workshop I facilitated earlier this summer, I agonized about how to structure breakout rooms. I wanted teachers to join grade-alike teams, or content-alike teams, and be grouped according to school. My desktop was littered with CSV templates, survey results, and participant lists. As a result, my thoughts had begun to dwell more on management than instruction. Since then, I’ve participated in a plethora of breakout rooms of various purposes and sizes and realized that my obsession was misplaced. Breakout rooms that are randomly assigned can have unexpected benefits. For one, they are easy and quick for presenters to assign in-the-moment. Also, hearing ideas from strangers, or joining beloved colleagues randomly for a quick chat can make for robust breakout room discussions.

Looking back at my workshop facilitation, my energy would have been better spent thinking about how many rather than who. The number of people in the room is a significant predictor of how much turn-taking will be had, and how the conversation might flow.

Assigning two people per breakout room probably guarantees the most speaking and listening. It’s hard to hide when you’re half of a pair. Between three and five people in a room allows for more diverse input, and also (graciously) allows for someone to remain quiet if they’re feeling shy. In my experience, six folks or more has the potential to set rooms up for a silent majority. And by that I mean, I’ve been a part of a few breakout rooms that have a critical mass of participants going mic-off, screen-off. If that’s what the majority of your breakout room is doing, discussion can start to feel more like a weird soliloquy.

This doesn’t mean that there is a magic number of breakout participants that will solve all problems. Instead, facilitators should be mindful of what they want attendees to get out of their time in breakout rooms. An intimate conversation? Try assigning pairs. A low-stakes chat? Up that number by a few. Does the benefit of diverse perspectives outweigh the risk of a breakout full of wallflowers? Then don’t fear five and above! You get the idea.

6. Time matters too.

Time is another factor that offers no one-size-fits-all solution. But again, presenters should keep their desired outcomes in mind when determining how long breakout sessions should last. At a conference I attended this week, breakout sessions ranged from just a few, to fifteen minutes in length.

• Two minutes= too quick. The time it takes to assign rooms, let people get situated in their rooms, account for slow wi-fi signals, and introduce themselves will make for a rushed experience.

• Three minutes= bare minimum. This gives breakout groups time to answer 1-2 straightforward questions. In my experience, it kept momentum moving quickly (great!) but didn’t always permit everyone to say their piece (meh). On the flip side, if “always leave them wanting more” is your mantra, three minutes might be ideal.

• Five minutes= just enough for a quick introduction, discussing a couple of prompts, and keeping things relatively light.

• Fifteen minutes= you’ve got to have a really motivated group, and a really challenging prompt, to make this work. If groups or participants are creating something during their breakouts, fifteen minutes is a good starting point. If they’re simply gabbing… be prepared. Most groups I’ve been in dedicate a solid 8 minutes to discussion, and then get to the real talk. Whatever is on everyone’s mind, is what will surface. In the workshops I attended recently, this was when everyone started asking what they really wanted to know: “Does your district know how they will start school again?” There’s nothing wrong with this very human tendency to swerve off-topic. One could even argue that it builds in time for natural community-building to grow. Just know, if you carve out that much time- it may very well happen.

7. Celebrity visits build connections

In a workshop that is well-attended, it can feel difficult to connect with participants. You’re not alone- it can also make it difficult for participants to feel like they’ve connected with the facilitator. Positive relationships can make up for a multitude of mediocre presenter- and teacher- errors.

Breakout room visits can help presenters and participants build connection.

In a coaching workshop I recently attended, the presenters “popped in” to our first few rounds of breakout rooms, to see how the conversation was going. Knowing that we each of us was one of four squares on a screen, rather than eighty, did wonders for feeling like we’d established a connection with the presenter. And it didn’t take long. The presenter probably joined my breakout for one minute out of fifteen. At that scale, she probably had time to check in with each group, pour a cup of coffee, and reset for the second half of the presentation. But in my mind, the return on that investment was worthwhile. My breakout room felt like we knew the presenter a little better, like she had noticed us, and that overall we could follow her through the rest of the session. Her “celebrity visit” built connections in an otherwise anonymous room.

Likewise, as a workshop facilitator, I have found that popping in to breakout rooms helps me gage the temperature of the group. Were they picking up enthusiasm on the topic at hand? Were there any misconceptions? What questions were coming up? And by the way, Hi and Thanks For Being Here. Visiting breakout rooms can be strengthening for both presenters and participants.

Regardless of why breakouts can get off to a bumpy start, presenters can set their meeting guests- and themselves- up for success. Strategies borrowed from classroom teachers can not only keep the energy moving in the right direction, but that also make participants (their students) feel supported- and help them learn.