Choosing what you express

You don't always choose the emotions you feel, but you do get to choose which ones you express.

Emotional intelligence depends on the will to recognize harmful emotions and the skill to avoid inflicting them on others.#SundayThoughts

— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) February 3, 2019

One of the early mistakes I made when working with students who were upset (often understandably so) about a situation is that I either 1) minimized their emotions or, when that didn't work, 2) indulged a way of dealing with emotions that was unproductive for both the child and myself. 

The way to find the balance between the two lies in communicating the concept Wharton Professor Adam Grant describes above. That is, one always has a choice about what comes out of your mouth. 

This is incredibly hard for children to actually do because their frontal lobe — the part of the brain that, among other processes, regulates impulse control and emotion — isn't fully developed and won't be until their early twenties. (Side note: This is why RAs often have the most interesting stories from college.) 

That said, a big thing about teaching for a living is convincing/instructing/cajoling people into developing worthwhile skills that they otherwise would resist. I can attest that students can make real progress in expressing their emotions in healthy and productive ways. It's hard because there's nothing fun or fast about this kind of teaching. 

Once I knew the words to say to a student, the next challenge was repeating them again and again. The proverb "fall down seven times, stand up eight" became a mantra. I remember directly saying this to one student after he asked me how many times I was going to tell him to count to ten and speak without shouting when confronted with a situation. (He, uh, wasn't great at holding his tongue or controlling his volume.) He came back a day later and made a connection between the phrase and the manga he favored. Didn't entirely fix the issue, but he got a lot better.

I don't understand manga but the kids really dig it.

Happy coincidences involving pop culture references you're too old to understand are one of the myriad ways working with teenagers is a strange and beautiful job. 

The (all-time winningest) football coach who didn't yell

One of the greatest coaches in college football history died a few weeks ago. You probably didn’t know about it.

John Gagliardi is the all-time winningest coach in college football history. That’s right — more than Nick Saban, Woody Hayes, Bear Bryant, and Joe Paterno. During his six-decade career, he won 75 percent of his games, 30 division championships, and four national titles, mostly at Division-III St. John’s University in Minnesota. (The coach who preceded him in the job said, “Nobody can win at St. John’s.”)

Gagliardi did this while:

• Never yelling at players
• Never using a whistle during practice
• Never cutting a player
• Never having a playbook and only minimal film study
• Allowing players as many water breaks as they wanted (he started this in 1940s, mind you) 
• Limiting practices to no longer than 90 minutes and banning tackling during practices
• Eliminating hazing rituals (again, this man started coaching football during the Roosevelt Administration)

He was a coach since age 16 when his high school coach was drafted to serve in World War II. His teammates asked him to coach and he proceeding to eliminate all the parts of practice he hated. He coached his high school team for the next six years with the school paying his tuition at Colorado College.

This part of his career is fascinating to me. In the Hollywood version of this type of story, of course it makes sense that the gifted player leads his teammates to victory simply by not doing all of the stuff they don’t like doing. The reality is that usually the stuff teenagers don’t like doing is the exact things they need to practice. Think running wind sprints or, on the academic side, writing and re-writing essays in English class.

Since I’ve spent quite a bit of time attempting to motivate sixteen-year-olds, Gagliardi’s early success is all the more remarkable to me. Usually if you leave teenagers to their own devices, it’s not going to turn out well. Whether it’s a classroom or a team, divisions are likely to emerge and would-be leaders (understandably) don’t yet know how to lead an entire group. Teaching is more a learned skill than an innate one and it takes some years to even achieve proficiency. Gagliardi seems to be the Yo-Yo Ma type of prodigy — gifted at the start, then able to build on early mastery.

The other that strikes me is Gagliardi's instinct for doing obvious things that were 180 degrees from what most of his coaching peers were doing. The thing about never yelling at players really sticks out. A lot of modern research on leadership shows that people are likely to learn more efficiently in a calm environment. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow is worth checking out on this and related topics.)  

Findings like that aren't surprising, so it's striking how often coaches and teachers still — on purpose, mind you — yell to make a point. Tell me a time you performed better when someone was screaming at you. Nevertheless, the myth of yelling endures — just tune into your local sports talk radio on pretty much any day. You’ll hear caller after caller say that what really needs to happen to fix ________ team is that the coach essentially just needs to "get tough" — i.e. yell more.

***

Another thing about the implications of Gagliardi's lifetime of work is this: Gagliardi plied his craft for decades, won early and often, has a legion of adoring alumni, and seems to have influenced pretty much none of his fellow coaches in any significant way. 

Instead, as his career started around the same time as Bear Bryant's and stretched well into Nick Saban's time, the latter two, with their dour demeanors and aggressive-even-by-football-standards approach ("Gotta be more physical!"), are considered the gold standard of football coaching.

This makes me consider: how many other popular assumptions about coaching and teaching are off the mark? Could Bear Bryant had won even more if he hadn't had such brutal practices? If Nick Saban didn't yell, would he be even more successful? 

To be more personal: what if some techniques I've been doing most of my career are kind of ineffective and the reason no one notices is that most everyone else's techniques are pretty ineffective, too?

I mean, I think I know some stuff that works. My students have done well by many measures. I don't yell at kids or do a lot of old school stuff. But still. Are there breakthroughs to be had in transferring skills and knowledge to young people? 

Is there another John Gagliardi out there?

Talking with kids doesn't involve much talking (from adults)

This is post in an occasional series about lessons I've learned from more than a decade of working in middle and high schools. Other posts here, here, and here.

***

Every so often someone asks me about switching careers to teaching. My first question is always the same: How do you feel about being around kids all day? 

My next question: No, really. Do you enjoy being around them? 

I find most people haven't thought hard about the sheer amount of time teacher spend with kid. Hell, thirteen years ago, I didn't think about it that way. I'm not sure I would've accepted my Teach for America placement in 2005 if I had. 

It wasn't that I thought I'd be bad at it. I thought I was cool enough (ha!), plus I liked being in front of people. There would be a learning curve, sure, but I'd figure it out. I did, eventually, but for none of the reasons above. 

In order to make it beyond the first year or so, I had to learn how to talk with kids — in my case, teenagers. You know, the developmental stage that combines narcissism, insecurity, ignorance, and emotional volatility. The one that many of us as adults try to forget or repress. 

Like teaching, people erroneously assume those who can built rapport with kids possess a gift and some people can do it effortlessly while others are doomed. There's some truth there, as a lucky few seem to have been born with the requisite combination of empathy, charisma, and wisdom that can elicit the best from the most angsty or angry kid. 

The rest of us have to work at it. 

The good news is that one of the rewards of working with teenagers is the opportunity to help them make better decisions and shape their lives and a more positive direction. (Makes up for the long hours and low pay.)

I'm not an expert and, in fact, I made a ton of mistakes. It's safe to assume that each of the following points came from hard-won experience. I hope I can spare you some of the same.

First, I learned to be a better listener. My conversational habits during my early-twenties were crap because I excelled at making every conversation about me. This doesn't go over well with anyone, but most peers were too polite to call me out. Teenagers weren't (and aren't) burdened by such niceties. There are few things teenagers are less interested in than the thoughts of adults.

Thanks to some wiser folks, I memorized the following phrases and applied as needed.

• “Say more.”
• “What is in your control?”
• “How do you think you should fix it?”
• “Who else will be affected?”
• “What is the ideal result for you?”
• “What have you learned from from this?”
• “If you had to do it again, what would you do differently?”
• “What do you want to change going forward?”
• “If you want to become your best self, what do you think you should do?”

Second, I discovered the subtle difference between affirming and agreeing. Teenagers say all sorts of crazy things, mostly because they are inexperienced at life. This is their first time through a breakup, a failed test, or peer rejection. Therefore, a lot of bad ideas are liable to come out (often alongside some, shall we say, poor linguistic choices.)

I initially would want to immediately correct those ideas, but my well-meaning advice would fall on deaf ears. What I realized is that a kid had to believe I heard them before they would listen to me. This took time and no small amount of smiling and saying phrases like, "I understand that you're upset."

Once they blew off steam, they were usually in a better place to reassess ideas like, "I'm going to repeatedly text (him/her) until they respond," or, "I'm going to punch (him/her) the next time I see (him/her)."

Third, I had to internalize the idea that I wasn't going to help kids by solving problems for them. This is hard to do in practice, primarily because this involves kids experiencing pain. If you have the slightest bit of empathy, you want to do everything possible to alleviate what they're going through. By doing that, though, you can create a dysfunctional cycle. Moreover, you deny a person the wisdom gained from addressing challenges and mistakes.

If anything, we want children to make mistakes while they're still in an environment where they have a support system that is stronger than anything they might have as an adult. They will be faced with tougher decisions when they are adults and the way to get practice making those decisions is by trying, failing, and trying again.

But it is hard to witness.

Finally, a cautionary note: be careful about what you promise. If you work with kids long enough, inevitably one will approach you and, before describing a problem, ask you to keep what he or she says a secret. This is where it's critical to both remember who the adult is and also take seriously the promises one makes to children.

This is how to thread the needle: Say something like, “I will listen to you very seriously. There are some things I cannot keep a secret because I also have to take your safety and the safety of others seriously. I don't want to make promises that I cannot keep. What I can promise to do is help you make the best decision."

The goal is to leave you space to ask for help and/or notify other adults who need to be brought in the loop.

A kid then may not want to tell you at the moment and that's OK. What I've found is that either the kid will eventually tell you or one of his or her friends will. If nothing else, you've left yourself room to go to another adult and say, "I'm worried about _________." School counselors are my go-to people for this. (I've even called the counselors for students who went to a different school than the one where I worked because because another student reported an alarming text message or social media post.)

This may upset a kid in the short term, but more than likely, that same kid will thank you later. What matters above all is their safety.

The rewards of working with kids aren't just the kinds featured in inspirational movie montages. Whether you're a teacher, coach, youth pastor, volunteer, or just a concerned adult, sometimes the best way we mentor is by making the difficult, ethical decision ourselves.

The thing about all kids is that they are always watching us — especially when they need help doing the right thing.

You can't just order people around (Well, you can, but it's surprisingly ineffective)

The Milgram experiments

A few days ago, I listened to Radiolab's podcast "The Bad Show." It explored bad behavior in a couple of different ways. The segment that stuck with me was their take on the famous Milgram experiments on the lengths people will go to follow directions. 

First, the context. An fake experiment on using electric shocks as a motivator for learning is staged. A regular citizen is brought and instructed by an administrator to give increasingly high shocks to a "learner" (actually a voice actor on a recording) if that person incorrectly answers parts of a memorization exercise. The "learner" purposefully starts making mistakes, forcing the regular citizen to decide to administer the shocks.  

The real experiment is to see when the person administering the shocks stops the experiments. That person is forced to hear the "learner" scream in pain and beg to stop. Labels on the "machine" show that the person is administering deadly shocks to the learner. 

The experiments were spurred by examining the idea: "How could so many German citizens be cogs in the Final Solution?" Nowadays, the experiments have been applied to subsequent genocides and also cover territory like: "How could so many Enron employees participate in a massive fraud?" 

The headline of the experiment is that a disturbingly high percentage of people will basically do what they're told by a person in authority -- or even one who looks like she or he is in authority. 

Milgram conducted dozens of variations of the experiment. Did it make a different in what the "administrator" was wearing? What about the age of the person giving instructions? What happens if the administrator gives rationale? What about if the administrator issues an order? What "The Bad Show" discusses are two important, oft-overlooked subtleties in the findings: 

1) What got the highest rates of compliance was when the administrator justified the experiment in terms of contributing the greater good. If the citizens thought they were doing their part to advance the science of learning, around two-thirds of them were willing to shock the learner enough to kill them. 

2) Giving direct orders was the least successful way of gaining compliance in killing people. About two-thirds of all citizens rebelled when giving a direct order to keep sending deadly shocks. 

***

The implications of these results are exciting and horrifying. One could take them in a dozen different directions. For example, I couldn't help but see echoes of them in the Maryland football scandal where a coach inadvertantly ordered a player to exercise himself to death.

For today though, I want to focus on way the experiments' implications could be used in a positive way -- managing people, specifically students. (Writing this blog has a way of quickly exposing the limits of my lived experience.) In a way, me learning how to lead a classroom more or less confirmed Milgram's results.

When I was a rookie teacher, one of the benchmarks that I set for myself was being able to give an behavior instruction with no rationale and get compliance from the students. An order, basically. 

I'm not sure how or why I got in my head that being able to order kids around was a mark of a teacher with a well-managed classroom. Then again, a lot of my ideas back then of what made for a good teaching were 100 percent wrong. I was always able to get a few to comply, but enough would rebel that in short order the lesson would go off the rails.

I never got to the point of being able to consistently, successfully order kids around. This is because as I got better at my job, I realized I didn't need to do it. 

It's sort of similar to the famous photo of cyclists smoking cigarettes while riding in the first few Tour de Frances. Turns out smoking cigarettes is counter-productive if one is riding 100 miles a day! Also counter-productive: barking orders at adolescents. 

Not a successful racing strategy

What I learned from much better teachers is that well-managed classrooms have a rationale -- implicit or explicit -- for everything that happens in executing a lesson. The teacher has set things up so the class doesn't need to rely solely on the authority of an adult for it to function. This creates a virtuous cycle where the teacher can achieve maximum compliance with a light touch. The students trust the teacher's direction, therefore the teacher can do all sorts of other things -- give suggestions, solicit peer feedback, restating rationale, clarifying or simplifying directions  -- instead of issuing a series of orders (with explicit or implicit negative consequences) to achieve the day's goal. 

Great leaders get the behavior they want by investing people in a clear vision, giving simple directions, depending more on persuasion than authority, and setting up strong systems to create a culture where people want to be best their best selves. If you observe one of these classes (or team or working groups), then you'll notice something interesting when there's off-task behavior. The person or people doing the non-compliant behaviors quickly give up because it's exhausting -- like swimming against the tide. 

Thanks to Milgram, we better understand the power -- for good and for ill -- of investing people in a grand vision. The experiments showed that we are hard-wired to follow directions more often than not when we believe we a part of something big and great. It also illustrates the power and perils of being the person in charge. These are morally neutral observations. 

What is up to us is our awareness of what we're asked to do and conversely, what we're asking of others when we lead.

The difference between knowing we humans have a tendency versus treating behavior as fait accompli is what makes a moral choice so hard in the first place.

A school's wraparound services are wonderful, necessary, and shouldn't be confused with teaching

A few assorted thoughts before I get to the point of this post:

- Wealthy people spending money to help at-risk kids get a better education is a Good Thing. 

- Wealthy people focusing education philanthropy on young kids instead of, say, funding a fancy collegiate athletic facility is also a Good Thing.

- It is astonishing that LeBron James has such a sterling reputation despite being in the spotlight since middle school, contending with God knows how many people attempting to profit off of his talent, plus handling the various pressures a world-class professional athlete faces, AND raising a family. The only minor public misstep he's made was a tone-deaf television special when he was 26. I made all sorts of dumb decisions when I was 26. Thankfully, none were broadcast on ESPN.

***
I wanted to expand on comments I made in response to some questions about the Akron public school LeBron James funded (and is providing some ongoing operations cash).

The school, called iPromise, is a regular public school in Akron. It's charter-ish in a couple of ways. It's a selective school, though not in the way "selective" is commonly known. Kids who are a year or two behind are eligible to attend. Also, the Akron school board has given permission for the school to have a longer school day, some additional staff, and some summer sessions. Classes are limited to 20 students, which is smaller than most public schools (traditional and charter), though slightly larger than most private schools. There's also some social-emotional support programs that, at first glance, seem similar to best practices piloted by Nashville-based charter Valor Collegiate Academies. (Full disclosure: I used to teach there before I was hired as an administrator at another school.)

To ensure long-term opportunities, James has partnered with the University of Akron to underwrite the students' tuition if they complete the middle school program and choose to attend U of A. 

***

In addition to what's above, the iPromise' school's "wraparound services" have garnered a lot of press. I follow school news pretty closely so I've heard the term in a variety of contexts. Sometimes it's by charter advocates when a new school is being proposed. On the opposite end, I've heard from folks who are trying to turn around a persistently struggling school-board controlled school (usually before the state or district begins action to shut the school down). The most frequent use is a sort of hand-waving from people who argue that additional wraparound services are what's needed to improve a given school's mediocre academics. 

Because the term is vague and sounds nice, it gets tossed around by people advocating for a bunch of different ed policies. So, let's break down what should and shouldn't be expected of wraparound services.

First, a better definition and some stipulations: 
1) In most cases, wraparound services focused on students are: school counseling, school-based social workers, after-school childcare, and some basic health care. 
2) All of these services are great and necessary. 
3) Every school needs more of them.
4) The outcomes of these services are notoriously hard to measure.
5) The best result of most services is when they help mitigate reasons why a student wouldn't be able to fully participate in a class. 
6) Providers of wraparound services can a do a terrific job with a kid and that student will still likely exhibit some significant challenges -- low grades, behavior issues, inconsistent attendance, etc. 

What I want to shout any time I read articles that describe a school's wraparound services but say little about a school's instruction: Wraparound services should not be confused with the main purpose of any school: teaching kids.

At different junctures in my career, I oversaw some wraparound services at a few different schools. I can say that nearly every counselor and social worker with whom I've worked has gone above and beyond to provide care beyond their job description. (Even then, some students have needs that exceed a school's capacity to meet. This could be where, for example, specialized schools or inpatient treatment programs come in.)

But even at their best, counselors shouldn't have to shoulder a teacher's responsibility. Sometimes it's a victory for a student to be present at school and doing just enough to pass a class.

Once a kid is in class, the overwhelming factor in determining how a student does is the teacher. From there, the major factors in ensuring a teacher does her/his job well are the leadership, instructional coaching, and culture of the school. (I'm simplifying a lot here. Scores of books have been written on what it takes to do each of those factors well and, even then, I've never seen or worked in a school that has it completely figured out.)

So, a school could have the greatest wraparound services in the world, but if the school's focus isn't on instruction, then the school isn't fulfilling its mission. 

The cool thing about education is that when another school succeeds, it's good for everyone. School achievement is the opposite of a zero-sum game. I'm rooting for the iPromise school because it could improve the lives of thousands of Akron kids over the years. Kudos to James for providing startup funding and ongoing support**. 

Just keep in mind that the main -- though not only -- determinant of success will be the factor that's gotten the least media attention: the teachers and administrators doing the work of teaching the kids. 

**I've read some criticisms of James because he isn't funding the whole thing. Ohio law sets limits on how much a private citizen can fund a public school.

My second major teaching mistake: trying to be the smartest kid in the room

Every teacher sounds like Ben Stein after a few minutes. 

This the second post in an occasional series about what I've learned from teaching and how it intersects with parenting. The first post is here. I'm not an expert in either teaching or parenting, but hopefully, 1) you find something useful below, 2) can laugh at the many mistakes I've made, or 3) both.

***

I have a terminal case of "smartest kid in the room" syndrome (hereafter SKR).This is not news to many of you who've known me for years. (In some cases, you were actually in a classroom with me. God bless and I'm sorry.)

The telltale sign is needing to say something about everything. This behavior is merely obnoxious from a student. If it comes from the teacher, it kills learning. When the teacher is the one over-explaining, editorializing, going off on tangents or dominating the conversation, it will choke off all but the most superficial learning. 

The consequence of me endlessly talking is that I did the bulk of the thinking, rather than the students. Moreover, once I started down the path of monologuing, it was tacit permission for students to tune out. When I've observed classroom where this happened, I'd turn my attention to the students' body language. It was akin to seeing people in a hospital waiting room with a TV. There's noise and motion, but almost no one is processing it. 

***

As a frequent offender, I use these guidelines to hold myself accountable when leading a class:

1. A tight agenda with short time segments and a visible timer keeps me on track. Even when a segment runs over, it was easier to switch them around because I'd thought through the rest of the class in a purposeful way. (I never truly appreciated the power of this sort of agenda until it was drilled into my head during the first summer I worked at DSST, where it is sacrosanct. DSST just won the Broad Prize. Holding all teachers to solid fundamental pedagogy is a major reason why.) The timer helped discipline me in a lot of ways, the most useful being that after 10 minutes, kids (and adults) need to shift gears. It forced me to distill what I was teaching to its most essential elements. 

2. Include directions on the materials I wrote so I don't have an excuse to monologue when introducing an activity. The temptation to editorialize or over-explain is overwhelming. Moreover, many kids won't overtly signal they're bored because 1) they're  polite and 2) I was the authority figure. A corollary to that is that when I had classes with lots of off-task behavior, over-explaining directions was one of the most common root causes. 

3. Answer a question with a question. This is useful on a couple of levels. If there was genuine confusion, I could quickly ask questions to a couple of students so I could discover if it was a whole-class issue. If it was just a few kids, I'd start with basic questions. ("What does the first question say? Read it to me." "What is it asking you to do?") It's also non-confrontational way to call the bluff of kids who ask endless questions in order to delay starting an assignment. 

***

So what does this have to do with parenting a threenager? Wilson, do you post a detailed agenda for your toddler? No, not quite, but I use timers to transition him from playing to bathtime, nap, bedtime, etc. Maybe it's just my kid, but he responds better to seeing timer tick down than he does to me verbally counting.

Giving simple directions is vital, too. More times than I'd like to admit L is confused as to what I want and not just being defiant because he's three.

Finally, responding to L's endless questions: It's great and wonderful and appropriate for three-year-olds to ask a ton of questions. It can also be exhausting to address. (And, even with Google to assist, my ability to truthfully answer many of his questions runs shallow pretty quick.) Therefore, meeting them with some of my own questions is useful. At best, he explains his thinking. At worst, he says, "I don't know," and we move on. 

I will stop now, lest I give in to my love of droning on and on. Hey, after a couple of decades, maybe I'm learning!

The first thing is seeing what's in front of you

First lesson of classroom management: Let 'em think you're always watching.

One of the underrated parts about being a stay-at-home dad is that infants sleep a lot. Consequently, I've had a fair amount of time to reflect on how a decade-plus of teaching impacted my life. Because this blog is nothing if not self-indulgent, I'll write about it every so often. 

Running a classroom forced me to learn skills that I would've never picked up otherwise. Teaching a roomful of adolescents has a way of forcing one to quickly adapt.

What follows is meant as part reflection and part mediation on how skills learned as a teacher can also be useful outside of a classroom. If you're an educator (or just spend a bunch of time around kids) and reading this, you likely know this stuff already. 

***

I had to learn to see the class. 

There are a lot of tricks and techniques to running a classroom. I first, though, had to develop the skill where kids get the sense that the teacher "has eyes in the back of his head." 

I was initially awful at this. You know those people who say they're natural multitaskers? Maybe they joke about having ADHD? I'm the opposite. I can tune out the world in an instant. (N confirms this.) It helps when one is grading papers or wants to finish reading a book. It's kryptonite when one is managing 28 or so adolescents at once. 

When I was struggling as a teacher many years ago, my principal observed one of my classes. He listed several misbehaviors that I hadn't addressed. As he was doing so, he looked at me and paused. "You didn't even see any of this, did you?" 

I shook my head. No, I wasn't even aware they had occurred. 

So began a crash course in something basic, yet taken for granted. Here's what I learned about truly seeing the classroom:

1. Stop talking so much. I couldn't talk and effectively observe at the same time. I learned to give directions in under three minutes and break up directions if they lasted longer than that -- or if I noticed kids getting the glazed look on their faces. (Sometimes the glazed look came on so quickly, especially in a post-lunch class, that I had to get a direction out in under 30 seconds.)

2. Use the corners of the room. This is one of the techniques that seemed obvious in retrospect, but I was like most teachers -- anchored to the front of the room. Standing there meant that I had to cover 180 degrees of sight-lines and there was always a section I couldn't see. The corners allow a person to see the entire classroom with only 90 degrees of head movement.

3. Empty my hands. Don't try to do anything when kids are supposed to be working. Don't write on the whiteboard, check my computer or phone, or grade papers. Organize the class so that everything I needed was out and ready. (This took quite a bit of effort for my naturally disorganized self.)

4. When there's even a minor disruption, observe for a few seconds (at least 10) before intervening. Often the student I thought instigated the disruption was actually responding to someone else. 

***

I've learned a bunch of other lessons, too, but everything flowed from first seeing what the children were actually doing in my class. I found it translated to parenting, too. My three-year-old can barely process one direction at a time, so talking to him for any longer than that just wastes time and builds frustration for both of us. 

Pausing a few seconds and watching him, even when he's misbehaving, is useful in figuring out the root cause of the behavior. He also has a radar-like ability to know when I'm paying more attention to my phone than to him -- this is when he magically finds something that 1) will break or 2) is sharp or 3) both. 

Learning to focus my attention and curtail distractions has probably saved my child several trips to the emergency room. That thought is simultaneously gratifying and frightening. God only knows what would've happened if I had done something else other than teach.

The point is that we should try to ensure parents can spend more time with their kids

While public opinion seems to be shifting against separating parents from their children (low hanging fruit, to be sure), let’s also take a look at the 120,000 women and 1.1 million men who are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and also have children under 17.

I’m not making a blanket call to release anyone who is parent. Rather, we need to re-align our corrections systems to its original mission -- to improve our society as a whole. This means we should use common sense and modern technology to reduce or mitigate the negative effects on kids whose parents are in prison.

A logical place to start is with the moms.

Tyler Cowen wrote a column about this for Bloomberg. His suggestion:

Let’s take one-tenth of [women in prison for nonviolent offenses] and move them from prison to house arrest, combined with electronic monitoring. That would allow for proximity to their children. If the U.S. isn’t plagued by a subsequent wave of violent crime — and I don’t think it will be — let us try the same for yet another tenth. Let’s keep on doing this until it’s obviously not working. 

My hunch is that this would have a negligible effect on crime, reduce costs for taxpayers, reduce recidivism, and improve all sorts of outcomes for their kids.

***

In my work as a teacher and administrator, I speak with parents regularly. This past year, I averaged 15 calls or texts per day. 

This included parents who are incarcerated. I've conferenced with parents and heard the monotone interruption of "This call is coming from a federal penitentiary." In other cases, I could infer that the parent was using a contraband cell phone. 

To state the obvious: parents care about their kids. They will go to extraordinary lengths to support them. It is in our interests as a society to help them do this. 

Our criminal justice system serves us, not the other way around. 

Back at it and quickly iterating

My follow through hasn't been great. I wanted to write at least three or four times a week once school returned to its regular schedule. That, obviously, hasn't happened. 

However, I suppose the corollary to "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good" is also to not let a temporary setback become a permanent failure. 

With that spirit, a few things that have been bouncing around my head:

* One of the more interesting ed ideas I've heard is from Matt Candler of 4.0 Schools. The theory is to push new ideas is in schools by creating a quick prototype at small scale, gathering feedback, then iterating quickly. 

In the podcast "The Leaders' Table," Matt points out a flaw in the mindset of many folks who work in the high-performing charter schools world. We want to come up with the perfect (and massive plan), then roll out an idea at scale. 

As a veteran of starting new grades six times, I can advise that this never works out. (Something about "the best laid schemes o' mice and men...") Inevitably, iteration happens but the lag time is, at best, weeks. More often, it's school year to school year. 

Matt argues that we'd all better off by getting an idea to the minimum level needed to make it live, then beta testing with a short window and small group of students and/or teachers. 

* In light of this, I've been thinking about the teacher's role in running a class so that students are mentally carrying the weight of the content. Another way of thinking about is moving from seeing teaching as something that is done to students; instead, a teacher works with students.

This, obviously, is not the easiest thing to pull off. The major barriers I face can be distilled to 1) I, as the teacher, have more content knowledge than the students and 2) creating strong enough cultural norms in class so that all students fully own their learning. 

Curating various social studies resources and savvy use of students' Chromebooks has alleviated issues around #1 so that I can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. 

The second concern is more vexing. The students for whom this more self-guided learning functions best also tend to be strong readers and already have great grades. I note that students who are struggling readers and/or struggle with motivation at school can fall further behind compared to their experience in a tightly-run teacher centered class.

As a way to address this, I've been testing the optimal balance of using fluency tools like Quizlet versus games like Kahoot versus direct teaching. 

Here's what I've found so far:

- Mastering the terminology of a unit feels slow at first, then pays off in the last weeks of a unit. I now have students start a unit by spending 3 minutes of class per day in the first week doing Quizlet flashcards individually. 

- In the second week, I start using games like Kahoot. The best questions are at the "stamping the learning level" -- i.e. "What" and "Who" and "How" questions. 

- Direct teaching is best for connecting thematic elements of the unit. As shown by my exit ticket data, students absorb direct teaching better in weeks two and three of a unit. Spending much time on thematic elements in the first few days of a unit seems to be relatively unproductive versus having students build their knowledge base. 

If I were teaching a language, the equivalent would be heavy focus on mastering vocabulary, then moving verb tense and sentence structure only after a base of 100 commonly used words is built. 

The class still feels too teacher-centered. I'd love to figure out a way for students to have higher-quality interactions with the materials earlier. This could look as simple as analytical conversations in a turn-and-talk, then building to a short piece of analytical writing. 

However, I've seen that doing this too early just causes the students to parrot whatever I directly taught or just offer a recitation of various facts they've picked up. 

'Which Side are You On?'

A couple of folks asked me for my opinion on Betsy DeVos as education secretary. 

My response is that anyone who is willing to work for this administration has disqualified herself from being worthy of it.

To wit: if a person is willing to go to work for Trump, he or she doesn't have either 

1) the values to use the ed secretary's bully pulpit to push against the inequality endemic in public education or 

2) the spine to stand up against the bigotry necessary to do so.

The Secretary of Education has some formal power and a lot of informal influence. If DeVos is willing to compromise herself in to order to have the title, she's kneecapped herself in actually exercising the influence. 

That sort of influence comes from moral authority. In saying yes to Trump, you give up your claim to that sort of power. 

***

Of course, the argument goes, someone's got to be the secretary. It might as well be the best person possible. 

In a normal circumstances, sure. A secretary appointed by a Republican will be on one end of a range of views; a Democratic secretary will be on the other end. Ideally, I'd want someone who is willing to push on holding schools accountable, offer flexibility on licensing, and hold for-profit groups in check, to name a few (of many) things I personally care about. 

I agree with DeVos on a few issues, disagree with many more, and don't know about a lot of stuff because she's mostly been a philanthropist and behind-the-scenes player.

Elections have consequences and I'm OK with leaders who go in very different directions. I'm OK with DeVos's nontraditional résumé for the role. Such is the reality of our democracy. 

In these times, though, values come before before policy. Specifically, who one is willing to work for reveals a lot of about that person's values. 

Trump represents a series of values -- bigotry, cruelty, authoritarianism, irrationality, to name a few -- that run counter to the American idea. When history calls us to account for this era, the refrain will be the same as the labor and civil rights song "Which Side are You On?"

We haven't judged kindly those who took nuanced views on integrating schools, buses, and lunch counters in South. Working for George Wallace or Ross Barnett was a stain that has only looked worse with time. John Lewis took a side against them and the system they represented. 

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

"All talk, talk, talk - no action or results."

One cannot truly value the idea of our public schools as the door the American dream for all and also be OK with Trump.

***

There is a time for nuance. There's a time for working with those whom you vehemently disagree. That's a necessary part of making this country work.

There's also a time for just taking a side. 

Everything we know right now about Trump says opposition is the only moral option.

Betsy DeVos's choice reveled where her values really are. The things Donald Trump said and did over many years -- and especially during his campaign -- did not disqualify him, in her eyes, from the presidency. 

Therefore, she is unfit to serve as the figurehead leader of American public education.