The Matthew Effect. And rationality. And reading.

You can tell I've been spending all my time teaching when it takes me an entire term to write a post about teaching. My "blog entries to write" section is long and full of ideas. Here's one I'm really wrestling with related to reading from our Term 1 central text, Things Fall Apart:

"Many years ago when she was the village beauty Okonkwo had won her heart by throwing the Cat in the greatest contest within living memory. She did not marry him then because he was too poor to pay her bride-price. But a few years later, she ran away from her husband and came to live with Okonkwo" (40).

Are you familiar with "The Matthew Effect?" Keith Stanovich poses that in reading "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." In other words, if you encounter a text and know at least a little bit about the topic going in, then you are more likely to be able to "get richer" or learn and grow through that text. On the other hand, if you don't have any background knowledge going into the text, you are less likely to be able to take anything away from the text. I've seen this concern pop up in a number of publications including one of my current geek-out-on-reading texts, Reading Reconsidered.  And as I've taught our central text this term, I've come across some passages from our central text that have made me think, "Ahhh, the rich are getting richer here!"

Embedding texts with the central text is one way to give "the poor" the information that they need to understand the central text. Making sure that students are closely tracking the ideas that might be unfamiliar to them also works this way. The four lines from Chinua Achebe's novel in bold above flummoxed my kids, and we were 40 pages in.

What does a student need to understand in order to understand that passage?
1. "the Cat" is a wrestler. A man. Not an actual cat.
2. "the greatest contest" is a wrestling match.
3. "bride-price"is... well, that takes a lot of explaining

And then there are the connections between all the ideas. What did my students struggle with? Understanding that the woman referred to as "the village beauty" fell in love with Okonkwo. That he came to her and asked for her hand in marriage, but the tribe's tradition required that a man show his financial worth by paying an appropriate (but negotiated) bride price to the father of the bride in order to win her hand in marriage. That the fact that "she ran away from her husband and came to live with Okonkwo" both represented a personal choice on her part, and was connected to the fact that he had "won her heart."

We spent time studying "bride price" outside the text. I feel they really needed to understand this idea because (among other reasons) it comes up again in a couple of other texts we'll study this year, so I'm trying to give them a foundation. We closely read the parts of the text that detailed the wrestling match. The details are on the opening pages of the book. They should stick. But still, this short passage flummoxed them.

What could the students NOT get? They could not get over their impression of Okonkwo. Okonkwo is a not-so-nice guy who loses his temper easily. And even though this passage is about Ekwefi, his second wife and her love for Okonkwo, the students cannot get over their sense that Okonkwo is a man whom a woman shouldn't fall in love with.

I asked them this question about those three sentences: How does this section of the text show that Ekwefi (the village beauty) has personal power? 

Most students could not answer this text-based question. Because of Okonkwo. Some students even applied Okonkwo's traits to the husband Ekwefi left (this reference is the only reference to him in the text). They couldn't imagine that Ekwefi was running to Okonkwo because she loves him. Instead, they argued that she was running from her husband because he must be beating her, too.

The rationality work we are doing with students comes into play here. What makes it so hard for them to see Ekwefi as an individual woman with power? What makes it so hard for students to see all the examples of Igbo men in the text who do NOT beat their wives? What makes it so hard for them to understand the bride price's relationship to the modern engagement ring? What makes the Igbo seem so unfamiliar (when really, we'd hope that they would see the familiar)?

Beyond the Matthew effect (which is HUGE!), we are fighting a bigger fight here. Our students (and we!) are coming to a text with biases that we need to recognize, unpack, and understand in order to fully comprehend what we are reading. How do we get our students to slow down? Not roll by these moments in a text? That's this week's wrestle.

Forming, Norming, Storming--Kicking off the School Year

I often cringe when someone asks a group I'm in to do some "norm setting." It usually feels too soon. Or too late. If it's too soon, the group develops a generic list of expectations that have no teeth to them or grounding in the reality of the work before them. If it's too late, the group develops a list of norms in a passive-agressive reaction to existing irritants ("No screens!"), or the group feels beyond the point of no return and isn't willing to say what they need. Allea iacta est. It's tough to squeeze that toothpaste back into the tube.

So, I was intrigued when this Edutopia post titled, "The Science Behind Classroom Norming" popped up in (teacher nerd alert!) my newsfeed this week. The word "science" caught my eye; "if there's a science to it," I thought, "I should probably try to better understand this!" Not really. I was primed to dislike the article before I even opened it because of my thinking about norm setting. I actually cringed a little bit, already skeptical about what was coming, but then I clicked on the link and found some food for thought for the coming school year.

The author first makes the claim that "the mechanism for norming is group talk" and then goes on to define norming as when a group comes to "an agreement among members of a classroom or school about how they will treat one another." The power of the relationship between action and words, though, should not be discounted in the process. My sophomores set non-verbal norms relative to use of classroom space simply by placing themselves in the same seat each day; habits become norms. So norms will develop--stated or not.

Here is my hopefully less-than-cringe-inducing thinking about norming heading into this new school year:

1. Timing matters. 
Mr. Finley highlights the stages of group development (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning); understanding the stage of a group is key to hitting the sweet spot for norm setting. In my facilitation experience, however, groups seldom adhere to the order outlined here by Mr. Finley. They'll form, norm, storm, go back to norming, perform, then storm again. Sometimes, after a storm, they transform because people leave the group.  Most teams go through some sort of storming after a poor performance in a highly anticipated game, for example. Group growth comes when a facilitator can help them move among the stages. Being thoughtful about where a group is allows us to know which conversation to facilitate when.

So I'm not going to do a norm-setting exercise on the first day of school (or the first day of meetings, for that matter). Not on the second day of school, either. I'm going to give my people some time to get over their anxiety about the start of the school year and to get to know one another well enough that I can task them with cooperating on group problem-solving activities. My big plan? I am going to shoot to formalize class norms in the moments before a storm hits. It's the Goldilocks plan--not too hot, not too cold... just right.

2. What's my role? Leader? Guide? Mentor? Consultant? 
A diagram in my experiential education files dated 1999 and credited to Laurie Frank places those four roles on a spectrum for group facilitation. She posits that in the earliest work with a group, the person facilitating must be a leader (although that term is open to broad interpretation). As the group continues to develop, the facilitator can move into a guiding role. It's that point where I'd like to be before I ask the group to set their own norms. In the past when I've facilitated norm setting with a group too soon, my voice has carried too much weight in the room. Mr. Finley mentions that he has his favorite norm: "I always add my favorite norm to the list: enter class with the academic swagger of Matthew McConaughey, ready to take care of business." I love the flair for this norm, but I'm not sure if I am comfortable adding my own ideas to my group's list, however, if I really want the students to own them.

3. Anticipate accountability issues. Norms! 
I ask my students to sign off (really--with a pen!) on the norms after we've come to an agreement on what they'll be. With one class last year, those stuck so well that when a new student joined at the semester, the students asked him to add his signature to our class agreement. Those students bought into the norming process. In my other class, however, the poster hung on the wall, and our stated norms became a room decoration. I'll need to consider my role in holding students accountable to their agreed-upon norms; otherwise, the group may re-norm without any of us noticing (and that won't necessarily be a good thing).

What might be a good thing for accountability, though, is if my students are fans of Cheers and can yell, "Norm!" every time someone breaks one... kidding. Well, only sort of.

George Wendt as Norm in Cheers

4. Revisit and revise--group processing 
I'd also like to think this year about ways to get more bang for our buck out of a norm-setting exercise. I am lucky to have my block-scheduled students all year long. We'll need to revisit the norms periodically (every term?) as the group progresses--performs, storms, re-norms--over the course of the school year. I'd like to make the norms document a living document for my students.

And the year begins...
Mr. Finley shares some of his favorite exercises to support the norming process in his post. Neat ideas. I appreciate the bigger picture questions his post raised for me, though. Wrestle on, friends.

Hum 10 Curriculum Overview part 2--Unit 1--"Individual and Society--Cultural Imperialism and Colonialism"

There are a number of moving parts to any curriculum. Here's term 1 of the coming school year in a bunch of boxes. A quick walk-through so that other posts might make more sense (and holy heck, curriculum mapping is a good time!):

• We have four terms in a school year. Each of the four terms has a social justice-related theme that ties directly into the central text and the context for that central text. For term 1, we look at cultural imperialism and colonialism because Chinua Achebe's text and the context for that text (including his writings about "An Image of Africa") allow for a deep, rich dive for students and teachers. 
• The Essential Questions will remain the same over the course of the year. By keeping them the same and studying different societies over the course of the year, we hope to augment our understanding of these questions. 
• The Unit Understandings require a deep understanding of both the central text (Things Fall Apart) and the context (Nigeria, late 1800s). We've laid those out for each of the four terms of the school year.
• The Rationality Understandings build over the course of the year, as well. We're laying a foundation in the first term. It's tough to tease out what exactly we need there. We'd like to do EVERYTHING, but we need to be judicious about how we layer in information. 
• We have two different kinds of supporting texts in the curriculum. One type of text is designed to supplement the central text and augment students' understanding of the context. Here, they are labeled arts/literature/maps/architecture. The other kind of supplementary text augments the central text itself. One of the most powerful pieces in this term is Achebe's argument for why he wrote the central text. It's an incredible read.
• Finally, there are writing program targets for the term. In the lefthand box, we have the synthesis and analysis targets for instruction. In the righthand box, there are some common mechanic pieces to teach. 

The language/information in each and every box has been a four-year team effort. We've had different teachers in the seats every year, but this document has gone through a four-year evolution. Frankly, that's the only way that a map like this will work--it has to come from the people who are committed to delivering on it in their classrooms.  I'm looking forward to seeing how these pieces come together in the day-to-day work of my classroom this coming year. 

Why a "Rationality Curriculum?"

Or a "deliberate thinking" curriculum?

Principled Thinking? 

Reasoned Thinking?

Deliberate Thinking?

Purposeful Thinking?

We're still trying to figure out what to call this thread of our Humanities curriculum. The discussion is an interesting one (and actually demonstrates how much all of us are thinking about our thinking and how certain words/phrases trigger others' thinking), but we haven't come to a conclusion on it yet. So for today's post, the thread of our curriculum being written about here is called the "critical thinking" or "CT" curriculum. (I feel quotation mark-happy tonight.) 

Below is a document that explores and explains the thinking behind the CT curriculum and its landing at the 10th grade. Jen Cerny, the extraordinary teacher at the core of this work, put this  together to help the 10th grade teachers understand the significance of the CT work as it supports our Humanities mission. It's worth a mind-blowing read (with apologies for the annoying changes in font--I can't get this platform to work really well for me yet): 

Social Justice, Critical Thinking, Global Citizenship

Without being specifically guided or nudged to see and think about human behavior (or human system or institutions) in a principled way, we will perceive ‘explain’ the behavior of people (including ourselves) in ways that are at best incomplete, and which easily are also lazy, uncharitable and even cruel.  In fact, it is probably more accurate to say that we “narrate” the behavior of self and others rather than explain it since we are really only capable of creating a story to make sense of what we have seen (connecting the dots).  

The ‘problem’ of having brains that are too easily satisfied with ‘easy and coherent stories’ that seem to do explanatory work is that the illusion of coherence makes us feel like the work is done, like there’s no more thinking to do.  The huge intellectual project of sophomore humanities is getting students to understand that the the real work begins after our first impressions (which are often miniature stories), but the danger is the pernicious stickiness of those first impressions.  

Understanding how the brain generates those impressions and becomes understandably but problematically attached to those impressions can help us do some of the “undoing” work that we need to do to get to the real meat and purpose of the sophomore curriculum.  Part of the “purpose” of sophomore curriculum is tied to our school’s mission of developing global citizens and leaders.  How, then, can the sophomore curriculum (including this CT curriculum) promote these goals? 

Part of the logic of a CT curriculum at the sophomore level is that it ‘complicates’ our sense of our own behavior, beliefs, etc., sufficiently that we can then extend a bit more “generous understanding” and imaginative effort to thinking about other people, and even to “distant others” such as those that are the subject of consideration in the sophomore curriculum.  

To borrow an expression from Keith Stanovich, what we are seeking to do in this year is develop the “mindware” that the students need to a) suppress their initial reaction to another culture, and then b) to develop a more nuanced and sustained habit of inquiry that leads to an understanding of that culture through their study of it over the course of a unit.  Doing this deliberate study while also explicitly foregrounding and studying the shortcuts and biases that infect/affect human thought and judgment will enable teachers to teach the students as much about themselves as about the cultures under consideration in the course.  

Doing this well requires that we are clear about the reason/motivation for this work and then endeavor to build the capacity for the desired skill, which in this case we are calling critical thinking.  The reasons are provided by the guiding theme of the class (social justice) and the school’s mission statement (responsible global citizenship, leadership) and the fact that human brains by definition and design make mistakes.  Cognitive errors lead to false beliefs.  Our goal is to get students to detect and correct the errors and then update their beliefs.  This is the process of ‘capacity building’ and this is accomplished by using the “Key Critical Thinking Understandings” that are accompanying each unit.  

Encountering Others: What 10^th grade is all about

If the System 1 and 2 model of cognition is true, then we don’t actually have conscious access to the actual functions of our brains that are creating our beliefs, judgments, actions, etc. What this means is that we can’t even describe accurately what makes us us.  To be glib, we are, in effect, an “illusion to ourselves” even if it doesn’t really feel that way.  

Consider, then, the cognitive complexity of thinking about other people, and the further complexity about thinking about “distant others” whether they are distant in time or place.  This is the problem of the 10th grade.  Confronted with a culture or character that ‘seems so distant and different’ and equipped with brains that like to move fast, students will easily and happily reduce the ‘story of them’ to the most singular of single stories: fundamental attribution error.      

Additionally, we tend to key on and cling to the illusion of difference, especially those that seem the most visible.  The more visible, the more representative of “real differences” they seem to be.  This is one of the less-than-useful heuristics because it usually behaves as a bias.  We see difference, we look for difference, we exaggerate the differences we really detect and might fail to recognize similarities.  

Consider, for example, what emotional, cognitive or intellectual ingredients might be ‘inside’ the following series of reactions that sophomores easily have when encountering things as unfamiliar as an Igbo tribe or a member of the Taliban:

Different!  Dangerous!  Wrong!  

Different!  Wrong!  

Different!

Different.

Different?  

Next, imagine what attitudes, actions, or behaviors might follow from each of these states.  What would the attitudes, actions and behaviors look like on an individual, group or institutional/national level?   

And what makes things worse is that we can’t shake the illusion of difference…we are determined to maintain it (Oscar and the chess board).  We can’t unsee it; it takes tremendous cognitive effort to do so, and really, it might be impossible.  But what if our goal, as citizens and leaders, is to do exactly that for the purposes of “thinking for justice”?  How can we build the cognitive capacity to do and to sustain this important work?  

Veil of Ignorance and iNSPECT

In addition to building the awareness of how our brains function, what they like and don’t like, what they do easily and what is hard, we have to constantly remember that thinking as an individual is not the same as thinking as a citizen or a leader.  These are different ways of thinking and they have different goals.  The problem is that we live, first and foremost, as individuals in the present tense.  Developing the ability to suspend much of that kind of individual thinking takes tremendous cognitive effort, especially with sophomores.  Using tools such as the Veil of Ignorance forces students out of their individual, present-tense embodied position.  Referring back to this constantly will help make the point that their default way of thinking isn’t the kind of thinking that they need to do in sophomore humanities.  Do not underestimate the degree to which they will find this difficult and tiring.  A principal benefit of using the Veil of Ignorance as an intellectual conceit in this way is that once they understand the basic idea, they will understand that there’s a distinct kind of deliberate (as opposed to automatic) thinking that they will need to deploy to “do humanities” successfully.  

To the extent that we want to create a world that is more rather than less just, it is important that we learn to be patient and deliberate when considering other people, their actions, their beliefs, and their lives in the broadest sense.  One way to build this capacity is by increasing awareness of how we are all products of our environments and situations, that we have cognitive systems 1 and 2, even if it doesn’t “feel that way” because can’t have introspective access to things that affect us unconsciously.   

In order to do this work of thinking about others well, we need to understand the ‘inner workings’ of our minds so that we can learn to look for the results of the intuitions that quite automatically formulate most of our judgments and assessments of other people and other cultures.  When it comes to thinking for justice, it then becomes interesting to consider how our assessments of others accrete into beliefs held by groups which then can become policies which promote or obstruct “justice.”  

Helpfully, the value of the iNSPECT model in bridging the “brain stuff” with the larger humanities project is that it helps constantly tune our attention to the situational and environmental factors that affect human behavior, beliefs, perception, etc.  If we can constantly remember that beliefs and behavior of individuals, groups and entire cultures are a function of many overlapping situational and environmental factors acting on fallible and biased human minds, then we can perhaps begin to recognize that we have the opportunity to ‘think for justice, or leadership or citizenship if that’s what we are inspired to do.  Minimally, building the “mindware” (cognitive habits and capacities) to always think about the deeply embodied and situated human experience will enrich our understanding, complicate our explanations of self and others and will optimally create immunity and resistance to the pernicious “single story.”  The single story which, by definition, is always comprised of inaccurate or insufficient assumptions and intuitions which accrete into beliefs which cause actions, such as judgment, which lead to actions and behaviors out in the world (including inaction, of course).  

Rawls and Veil of Ignorance

Only “rational” choice is to design a system that equally benefits all, and which doesn’t unduly harm anyone.  

This makes the injustice embedded in any ‘real’ system manifest.  Then the question becomes ‘what’s the source or the reason for the injustices’?  While there will always be relevant differences, and different kinds of inequality (in height, intelligence, etc.,) these don’t always translate into injustice.  Injustice is, therefore, a kind of ‘choice’ that is made, either explicitly or implicitly.  Injustice becomes a product or a by-product of a designed system.   The injustice might be explicitly engineered in, or it might be a result of other forces, but it is nevertheless a product of a designed system.   

Dodges to Rawls’ game reveal the essence of rationalizing; specifically rationalizing different forms of injustice.  It is extremely hard to “think objectively” but that’s the point: it reveals that our default ways of thinking are highly embodied and subjective, and because our bodies and their positions are “the water” they can be hard to detect, override, etc.  Thinking in a disinterested way is incredibly hard and deeply counterintuitive because we are almost always seeking ways to design systems that benefit ourselves.  

Difficult to see, and to see the functioning of our advantages because we are hard-wired to be more attentive to those areas where we detect injustice, disadvantage or headwinds.  

If this wasn’t problem enough, we must also consider the probability that our assessments of what counts as fair might be affected, unconsciously, by the ‘inaccurate stories’ that we tell ourselves about other people, and about ourselves.    

What judgments or actions would be embedded in or implied by each of the steps in this sequence?  Notice and factor in the implicit ‘emotional urgency’ indicated by the exclamation points.  How might fear be animating the reaction in the first two sequences?  

DIFFERENT! WRONG! DANGEROUS!  

DIFFERENT!  WRONG!

DIFFERENT!

DIFFERENT?  

Judgments about justice and fairness presuppose a lot of other judgments about other people and groups.  Those judgments are comprised of various beliefs (some implicit, some explicit).  Judgments and beliefs are based on perceptions, which are inevitably incomplete (WYSIATI).    

1. Inaccurate sense of ourselves 

2. Incomplete sense of ourselves

3. Even more inaccurate sense of others 

4. Even more incomplete sense of others 

5. While it can be good to say “us” or “them” in some settings, in our modern context these distinctions are not pro-social for the most part.  While some differences are relevant (male/female, young/old) the way those differences function is usually a product of their milieu/environment.  We tend to ‘import’ our ways of thinking about the category into the new environment…

6. So then the problem of thinking about other cultures is two-fold.  Kahneman reveals that first, we have difficulty in accurately perceiving and describing our own beliefs, actions, perceptions, etc.  Related to this is the fact that our own embedded position on our own lives creates a false sense of ‘rightness’ because of ‘mere exposure’ and ‘familiarity’ which are heuristics.  Our brains assume that what we know is right, largely because we’ve never been fully exposed to any alternative way of being.  When we encounter that alternative way of being, the first brain response is something like “that’s wrong.”  

7. It is these judgments that contributed to the attitudes that accreted into policies by nations that have created some of the most pernicious injustices that we see all around us today.  But because these injustices “have always been there” we tend to assume that they’re more natural, more inevitable than they actually are.  To those acquainted with Marxian/materialist ways of thinking about ideology, this is partially what that refers to.  

Without being specifically guided or nudged to do otherwise, we will also default thinking as individuals rather than thinking as a person with responsibility to a community.   

Without being specifically guided on nudged to think about our own thinking and cognition in specific ways, we will tend to excessively trust our intuitions and formulate further beliefs as a result of them, and we will feel excessively confident about these things because we haven’t been equipped to ‘see’ and much less to ‘interrogate’ them.  

Hum 10 Curriculum Overview part 1--To what end? and Jigsawing

I work with someone (fortunately!) who regularly asks me to explain the connecting threads between the different puzzle pieces of our level's curriculum. Why does that piece go with that piece within a certain unit? Or what is the connecting thread between the first unit and the second unit within that component of the curriculum? When he asks me to articulate my thinking, we end up negotiating the language until we gain clarity about the different pieces (the essential questions, the unit understandings, the rationality understandings, and the writing curriculum) and about the relationship between them. Given the long road the 10th grade team has travelled to get to the current curriculum map, it's clear that curriculum mapping is a constant refinement challenge; what I'm about to throw out to the world is the latest (and most complete yet!) version of the Humanities 10 curriculum. My plan is to take myself (and whomever is reading this blog--you?!?) through a walk-through of the design of this curriculum to help reiterate the "whys" of its design.

To throw a little Beauty and the Beast fun into the mix: "It is with deepest pride (seriously!) and greatest pleasure that we welcome you tonight. And now we invite you to relax, let us pull up a chair, as the 10th grade proudly presents... Our curriculum map!"

Wrong picture. But this is kind of how it feels to have a curriculum map like the one we now have...

Terms 1 and 2, an overview

To what ends 1 and 2? 

There are actually three layers of "to what end" in the curriculum map above. To what end is a great 

question to ask when you are looking for your "why" in a curriculum. I have a major brain crush on 

Simon Sinek, and his TED talk  is useful when considering how to get people to buy in to your 

company. So what is the why? Our school's mission is to "educate[] its students for leadership and 

responsible citizenship in society by developing and nurturing the whole individual..." So that's the 

ultimate, "To what end?" And to serve the mission of the school, we need to have clear outcomes 

for our Humanities curriculum. I can identify a number of benefits of a Humanities education, but 

the "21st Century Learning Outcomes" list in that first column seem most relevant to our students' 

futures as leaders and to the mission of the school (so to what end 2). 

To what end 3?

At the top of the map, is the third end--the driving essential questions of the course. While we've 

wrestled with the role of essential questions in Humanities classes for quite some time, having these 

questions as a frame for the year gives us a direction for student understandings. In order to get 

towards those 21st century outcomes and to get through our existing curriculum, the thread that 

weaves all those pieces together is that of justice. Students need time to wrestle with those big 

questions: What defines a just society? What creates injustice in societies? What makes it difficult 

to perceive injustice? What is the role of the individual in responding to injustice? In order to begin 

to answer those four essential questions, students will have to develop deep understandings of 

societies; those deep understandings are the core of our Humanities curriculum.

Jigsawing and Threading

Those big questions all tie in directly to the threads of the curriculum. In order to begin to answer 

the questions, "What defines a justice society?" and "What creates injustice in societies?", students 

will need to do a deep dive into the societies at the heart of our central texts and the contexts of 

those central texts--the core Humanities curriculum. In order to begin to answer the question, "What 

makes it difficult to perceive injustice?", students need to do a deep dive into the rationality/critical thinking curriculum. And finally, in order to consider the question of "What is the role of the 

individual in responding to injustice?", students will be prompted to consider their own roles as 

leaders and responsible citizens (the "Modern Application" section of the map is where we're 

headed here). 

What's next?

Term 1. Overview version 1 is a walk-through of the big picture curriculum pieces. Overview 
version 2 will start to pick at our thinking through the threads of Term 1.  

Reading Across The Disciplines + the Marshall Memo

Ahhh, the luxury of summer. I got the Marshall Memo this morning, and I didn't have to file it away until later so that I could get some email messages sent, papers graded, or lessons planned. I actually got to read it right away. If you don't have this resource, you should get access to it--it's like a personal curator of the most interesting articles on education from resources across the web. Here's his mission in his own words: "This weekly memo is designed to keep principals, teachers, superintendents, and others very well-informed on current research and effective practices in K-12 education. Kim Marshall, drawing on 48 years’ experience as a teacher, principal, central office administrator, consultant, and writer, lightens the load of busy educators by serving as their 'designated reader.'

To produce the Marshall Memo, Kim subscribes to 60 carefully-chosen publications (see list to the right), sifts through more than a hundred articles each week, and selects 5-10 that have the greatest potential to improve teaching, leadership, and learning. He then writes a brief summary of each article, pulls out several striking quotes, provides e-links to full articles when available, and e-mails the Memo to subscribers every Monday evening (with occasional breaks; there are 50 issues a year)."
Go to http://www.marshallmemo.com if you are interested in learning more. Now.

But this is today's brief summary of something on my mind, so I'm putting this here partially as a placeholder. I need to come back to it. I've been geeking out about the teaching of reading for several years now, and I'm getting interested in reading in other content areas, too. So here's today's favorite from Kim Marshall:

Getting Students Reading, Writing, and Thinking in Each Content Area

In this article in Primer, author/consultant ReLeah Cossett Lent acknowledges the pushback from some content-area teachers when they’re told to teach generic literacy skills in their classes. “Of course we want all students to read deeply, write with clarity and purpose, and use critical thinking to solve problems,” says Lent, “but mandating programs or generalized solutions without asking teachers what makes sense in their content area rarely gets us moving in the right direction.” There are big differences in how students read, reason, write, think, speak, inquire, and participate in different content areas, and the disciplinary literacy movement needs to acknowledge that. Here are Lent’s suggestions for each subject:

Science:

• When scientists read, they…
- Assume an objective stance;
- Ask why;
- Rely on data, sketches, and charts;
- Make connections from known concepts to new concepts;
- Determine validity of sources and quality of evidence;
- Pay attention to patterns;
- Make predictions;
- Review and reflect;
- Pay attention to vocabulary.

• When scientists write, they…
- Use precise wording;
- Compose in phrases, bullets, graphs, or sketches;
- May favor the passive voice;
- Seek exactness over craft;
- Communicate in a systematic format;
- Distinguish facts from opinions.

• When scientists think, they…
- Allow curiosity to drive learning;
- Look for connections;
- Understand when they need more data;
- Rely on prior knowledge or research;
- Consider new hypotheses or evidence;
- Propose explanations;
- Create solutions.

History/Social Science:
• When historians read, they…
- Identify bias;
- Untangle conflicting perspectives and claims;
- Corroborate information and sources;
- Contextualize sources;
- Examine text structure;
- Compare and contrast events, accounts, documents, and visuals;
- Infer what is not explicit;
- Analyze and interpret.

• When historians write, they…
- Create timelines with accompanying narratives;
- Use information and evidence from multiple sources;
- Organize conflicting ideas or perspectives into a whole;
- Grapple with large quantities of information;
- Use the past as a mirror to the present;
- Summarize social or political consequences of an event.

• When historians think, they…
- Sift through fragments of information;
- Compare and contrast what they have been presented;
- Connect causes with effects;
- Synthesize events or ideas across long periods of time;
- Recognize bias;
- Think critically.

Mathematics:
• When mathematicians read, they…
- Isolate information they have been given and look for information they need;
- Identify patterns and relationships;
- Decipher symbols and abstract ideas;
- Apply mathematical reasoning;
- Seek accuracy;
- Analyze, formulate, and interpret;
- Evaluate data.

• When mathematicians write, they…
- Explain, justify, describe, estimate, or analyze;
- Use representations;
- Seek precision;
- Use real-world situations;
- Communicate ideas clearly;
- Draw conclusions.

• When mathematicians think, they…
- Use all available information to solve problems;
- Consider generalizations and exceptions;
- Bring forth previous understandings;
- Know when to estimate and generalize;
- Employ mathematical principles;
- Engage in conceptual understandings.

ELA or English:

• When students of English read, they…
- Find meaning through literary techniques;
- Identify underlying messages that evolve as a theme;
- Recognize bias;
- Use context to learn new vocabulary or words used in new ways;
- Summarize, synthesize, and analyze;
- Comprehend how devices such as tone, foreshadowing, or irony affect the text;
- Question the author;
- Make connections;
- Pay attention to the craft of writing.

• When students of English write, they…
- Use a process: drafting, revising, and editing;
- Understand how to flexibly use organization, details, elaboration, and voice to enhance meaning;
- Ask for feedback;
- Avoid formulaic writing;
- Employ literary techniques and devices appropriately;
- Use evidence;
- Avoid bias.

• When students of English think, they…
- Use reflection as a tool for understanding;
- Ask questions of the text;
- Compare texts or themes;
- Clarify through discussion;
- Use their thinking in speaking or written form;
- Make connections among texts, themes, or the real world.

Differentiating disciplinary literacy in this way, concludes Lent, “we can tap into the potential of every teacher to guide students in unlocking the mysteries of their content. No longer will teachers feel that someone has imposed literacy upon them, but they will discover the best literacy practices for their content, creating readers, writers, and thinkers who rely on their teachers’ expertise to gain access to content-area knowledge.”

“Disciplinary Literacy: A Shift in the Right Direction” by ReLeah Cossett Lent in Primer (from the Massachusetts Reading Association), June 2017 (Vol. 45, #2, p. 6-11), no e-link


I wonder what my friends in the other content areas would think about these lists (especially the reading and writing lists), and I also wonder how we could think together about instruction and assessment to support students to develop these skills. Do they need to be taught to read differently in different areas?

Curricular Innovation--Numa Markee and the Writing Program

In thinking about making changes to our Writing Program by layering in new types of writing to our existing curriculum, I've also been kicking around some memories of one of my favorite graduate school classes. The central text for the class was Numa Markee's book called Managing Curricular Innovation . Even better, though, the instructor of the course was Numa Markee himself. In our small class of four or five (LOVE graduate school!), we did an intense review of the programming of a local intensive language program. It required that we look at the program at every level--from the personnel to the curriculum to the students' perceptions of the program, and we then made recommendations for innovation. And it revealed to us all just how complicated curricular innovation can be.

That being said, this morning had me thinking about some specific steps we'll need to go through in order to be effective in this coming change to add analysis writing into the curriculum:

1. "the what"
I wrote this in an email to another member of the leadership team this morning: "Our first step together is to define "the what" of analysis writing. While APLAC does put an emphasis on rhetorical analysis of nonfiction pieces, we can also teach our kids rhetorical analysis of fiction and teach them literary analysis, as well. The question for us is to what end we would like the kids to unpack a text. Perhaps most important here is that we develop precision in our language with each other and around what kind of analysis they are doing--this will help them to know what to look for. We can't make the assumption that the department has any sort of common understanding at this point of what it means to analyze a text and write that analysis, so we need some common resources from which to work to understand the what (APLAC docs, sample analytical essays/paragraphs, HOs from Ts who have taught the skills...) before we can figure out the how and the when." 


One thing, in particular, that I'm thinking about is how we develop our own "teacher language" around analysis. It's messy work, but if we can get the language consistent across levels, students will have clear branches to hang their thinking hats on as they work their way from 9th-12th grade. 

The last time we rolled out a "type of writing" in the form of the Writing Program, we had to spend quite some time getting faculty to calibrate expectations and understandings about what we were doing. Unfortunately, we were doing that calibration as we were teaching students. It made for some really difficult conversations because faculty were often walking into conversations after having done something with their students and then were realizing they may have poorly directed their students. I'm hoping we've learned from that experience that there are important foundational conversations that need to happen before we can roll out instruction to students. 

2. "the how"
I remember learning in Numa's class about early, middle, and late adopters. I'm still interested in that idea when bringing a change to the curriculum. How can we roll out a change to help everyone understand it and buy into it? Given the particular context of our department as it stands right now, there's definitely not a one-size-fits-all rollout model. For me, it's important that the CTL (curriculum team leader) gets to support the individual level in determining the path that works best for the personnel and curriculum of the level. If we can clearly determine that end target for each level, then allowing the people at the level to figure out the path will be most helpful.

3. "the when"
I was actually hoping to have the first conversation at the 10th grade about this in June Week (a week of meetings at the end of a school year) of this past month, but we needed to do some clarifying at the department level first. Those conversations are going on now. And so when I'm thinking about "the when" of curricular innovation, I'm thinking about which conversations have to happen behind the scenes before the conversation happens with the level. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to pull together the necessary materials to get this information out to my level in August of this year. We certainly need to get our kids doing this kind of writing this year because we need our kids to be prepared for the eleventh grade. The thing about "the when" is that nothing happens quickly in curricular change (unless you are the only person delivering on the curriculum).