Literacy challenges have intensified through the pandemic, demonstrated in states like California where 3rd grade English Language results were lower in 2022 than they were in 2019, leading to the following statement regarding our current reality: “The scores may be brutal … but they’re far from shocking. Some experts view this uproar over falling test scores as a distraction from the sobering fact that these challenges persisted long before the pandemic, in terms of teaching kids to read.”

Our legacy approach hasn’t been effective in meeting the needs of all learners. Now is the time for us to rethink the ways in which we organize our efforts to improve the impact for the benefit of learners, communities, and society as a whole.

From Grade Levels Classrooms to Literacy Launchpad

Imagine if we could break away from these rigid one-classroom, one-teacher school structures and instead organize our elementary students into microschools with a dedicated focus on ensuring each and every child is literate by 2nd grade.

As an example, a neighborhood elementary school that currently houses 600 students organized into grade levels could be organized into 4 microschools of 150 students each on the same campus. The microschools could be multi-aged, incorporating looping and team teaching to develop strong relationships, and held accountable to locally-developed outcomes as well as family choice among the microschools.

We also can envision that the aggregation of microschools can help us address one of the most pressing challenges of our time to dramatically improve early literacy rates that we know are foundational for future success. An early-literacy focused microschool with clear competencies could be the initial placement for all students until they demonstrate mastery of those competencies at which point they would matriculate out into one of the other site-based microschools. This early-literacy microschool could be deliberately resourced with extensive expertise, personnel, and programming to ensure that ALL learners have a strong and stable language and literacy base to set the stage for lifelong learning.

Targeted teaching and learning that includes phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary building, fluency practice, comprehension strategies, structured reading time, and culturally-responsive methods would be delivered by teams of educators in a literacy-rich environment who work closely with families to ensure that every learner makes significant progress.

What Sets the Literacy Launchpad Apart?

The Literacy Launchpad represents a departure from traditional primary age classes in several key ways:

●  Focus on Literacy Proficiency: The primary and most significant difference is the explicit focus on literacy proficiency. In a traditional primary classroom, literacy skills are one component of a broader curriculum. In contrast, the Launchpad places literacy at the forefront of its educational mission.

●  Specialized Expertise: The Launchpad is staffed with highly specialized educators who are experts in literacy development. These educators have extensive training in evidence-based literacy strategies and have a deep understanding of how to support students in mastering foundational reading and writing skills.

●  Competency-Based Assessment-Driven Instruction: The Launchpad utilizes frequent and thorough competency-based assessments to identify each student’s literacy strengths and weaknesses. This data guides the development of personalized, assessment-driven learning plans for every learner.

●  Intensive Intervention: For students who require additional support, the Launchpad offers intensive, evidence-based interventions. These embedded interventions are designed to target specific skill deficits and help struggling learners catch up to their peers.

●  Small Learning Communities: The Launchpad is organized into smaller learning communities, creating a more intimate and personalized learning environment. This improved adult-student ratio allows for greater individualized attention and fosters stronger relationships between students and educators.

●  Multi-Age Grouping: Unlike traditional grade-level classrooms, the Launchpad may incorporate multi-age grouping. This approach allows students to learn alongside peers at different developmental levels, promoting collaboration and peer mentoring.

●  Flexibility in Progression: Students progress through the Literacy Launchpad at their own pace, based on their mastery of literacy skills. There is no rigid grade-level progression. Instead, students move forward when they have achieved proficiency in reading and writing.

●  Individualized Learning Plans: Every student has an individualized learning plan that outlines their unique literacy goals and the strategies and resources required to achieve them. These plans are continuously updated based on ongoing assessments.

●  Community Engagement: The Launchpad actively engages parents and the local community in supporting literacy development. It recognizes that literacy proficiency is a shared responsibility and involves all stakeholders in the learning process.

●  Inclusive and Equitable: The Launchpad is committed to inclusive and equitable education. It ensures that all students, regardless of their starting point, have the opportunity to reach literacy proficiency. Special education services are seamlessly integrated for those with diverse learning needs.

Overall, the Literacy Launchpad represents a paradigm shift in primary education, where literacy development is the central pillar of the curriculum, and personalized, evidence-based approaches ensure that every student becomes proficient in reading and writing. This innovative model seeks to address literacy challenges comprehensively and set students on a path to lifelong learning success.

A Bright Future Awaits

The evolution of elementary education from grade levels to literacy-focused microschools is not just a vision; it’s a tangible possibility. The Literacy Launchpad could be a game-changer for our young learners, setting them on a path to success in all subjects and success in and out of school.

As we move forward, let’s embrace our responsibility to co-create a brighter future for teaching and learning. The time is now, and the way forward is together. Let’s configure schools that unlock the full potential of education for all learners by ensuring that every learner has a strong language and literacy foundation for lifelong learning.

The post The Future of Elementary Education: Literacy Launchpads that Ensure Literacy for All appeared first on Getting Smart.

In a recent workshop a teacher reflected, “Everything we do is focused on getting students to go to college.” When asked how many students go to college she shared, “usually about 30%.” The next question might be what you are also wondering: What is the plan for the other 70%? “Well,” she acknowledged, “we don’t really talk about that.”

You might be assuming this is an anomaly. How could a school, a state, or a country set up a system that only serves 30% of the population without acknowledging and serving the majority of students? We decided to look at the data for college preparedness and found out that this school’s 30% of students going to college was, in fact, below the national average. Unfortunately, it wasn’t by much.

Nationally, the data shows that  43% of students go to college, which means that the focus in most high schools to get good grades, take AP classes, and earn high scores on standardized tests such as the ACTs or SATs to get into college does not serve the majority of students. Worse yet, only a select few attend elite colleges with such competitive requirements.

The truth is that college matriculation rates vary widely throughout the country. In contrast to the teacher whose school only had 30% of students going to college, there are many schools that have 70% of students go on to college. We don’t intend to dismiss this, but the reality is that college isn’t the plan for all students. And even if it is, elite institutions aren’t the plan for most students. Given this reality, there are opportunities to improve pathways for all students, including those who do go to college, so that we better prepare every young person for their future.

Most Colleges Accept A Majority of Their Applicants

Out of the some 2,000 accredited four-year colleges featured on CollegeData, only about 50 of them routinely admit fewer than 30 percent of applicants, qualifying them as highly selective universities. These schools include Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, and Yale. In terms of the total population of adults, these selective schools serve less than 2% of Americans.

So what this means is that if your heart (or your children) is set on one of these elite colleges, focusing on AP courses, perfect GPAs, high SAT or ACT scores, and extensive extracurriculars seems like a necessary path. However, for the other 98% of students, your chances to be admitted to the vast majority of colleges may actually be quite promising. Most colleges accept more than half of their applicants. The average acceptance rate for all four-year colleges in the U.S. is about 66 percent (or two thirds of applicants), according to a 2017 report from the National Association for College Admissions Counseling. This list includes well-known names such as St. John’s University in New York (67.7%), Virginia Tech (70.1%), Quinnipiac University (73.9%), the University of Missouri at Columbia (78.1%) and George Mason University (81.3%). It seems we confuse the prerequisites to getting into a college that is a good fit, proximate, and has reasonable admission criteria with the landscape for elite schools intentionally reserved for a select few.  

Elite College Admissions For Few Drive K-12 Processes For Most

In spite of the reality that most colleges accept a majority of applications and college enrollment has been declining for a decade, the highly selective college admissions requirements of the tiny but influential network of “selective school” universities essentially establish the baseline process for the rest of the field.  What’s more, the admissions procedures for these selective schools focus on efficiencies through standardization of the data, compelling the field to stick with seat-time-based courses, traditional letter grades, and tests like the SAT and ACT.

What does this mean? If less than 2% of students attend these selective universities, this data reinforces the uncomfortable reality that 52.2 million students aren’t served by K-12 schools that are largely organized around the needs of admissions criteria of this small number of highly selective universities.

Broadening The Path To Post Secondary Success

As educators and parents, we believe it is worth considering the adverse effects of this myopic focus on elite college admission requirements: High schools are plagued by increasing levels of pressure, late nights cramming for tests, increasing depression and anxiety … for what? Even at these selective colleges, the depression rates are alarming with studies indicating that “adolescents in high-achieving schools can suffer significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse and delinquent behaviors, at least two to three times the national average.”

When we expand our definition of success beyond getting into elite institutions to a plan for a prosperous life beyond K-12 that is built on the strengths, interests, values and aligned job prospects for young adults, we can improve student well-being and help all learners discover their unique potential.

The solution is to decouple our view of success with admissions into the small number of universities and to engage our communities in conversations about what matters most and collaborate to create multiple pathways that lead to success for all students, not just those who aspire to attend elite colleges.

Multiple Pathways Create More Access To Success

In our experience, when we engage in authentic conversations with students, families, and educators about what they really want for the future, we hear about the importance of relationships, health, happiness, and contribution. The process of clarifying what is most important in local communities has led to the development of inspiring new models such as the California State University San Marcos guaranteed admissions agreements with schools in North County San Diego as well as career pathways that leverage local interest-based learning opportunities within the community. Students can demonstrate progress toward their goals through meaningful performance assessment, learner portfolios, and defenses of learning aligned to a local profile of success.

Given the staggering number of students who are not well-served by the efficiency-focused college admissions process for a small number of elite universities, it is time for us to redefine success, prioritize authentic learning, and offer relevant pathways to ensure that all students know who they are, thrive and actively engage in the world as their best selves.

Dr. Katie Martin is the Chief Impact Officer at Learner-Centered Collaborative and the author of Learner-Centered Innovation and Evolving Education.

Dr. Devin Vodicka is the Chief Executive Officer at Learner-Centered Collaborative and the author of Learner-Centered Leadership.

The post The Tail is Wagging the Education System appeared first on Getting Smart.

The COVID-19 pandemic has tested public education in the United States like nothing else in recent memory. But with vaccination numbers on the rise, more schools are finally looking ahead to resuming in-person instruction—and confronting the potentially historic setbacks students suffered over the last year.

Helping students recover—socially, emotionally, and academically—will be a years-long effort that may prove even more challenging than the pandemic itself. Fortunately, schools have two powerful resources to draw on as they formulate their plans. The first has received plenty of attention: an unprecedented infusion of federal funding. Less well-known but just as important is the burst of promising new approaches to education that school systems, educators, and families pioneered in response to the crisis.

Across the country, schools rolled out and refined virtual instruction, partnered with community organizations to provide tutoring and other supports, and enlisted families as true partners in their children’s education like never before. Students and families adapted in creative ways, too, with many forming learning “pods” or more informal support networks. Familiar process-oriented metrics such as seat time were impractical measures of success, opening up new opportunities for communities to reflect on the purpose of schooling. This all happened mainly out of necessity: the traditional approach to school wasn’t possible, so we had no choice but to create alternatives.

But in their understandable haste to reopen buildings and welcome back students, it would be a mistake for schools to treat the work of the last year as relevant only during once-in-a-generation emergencies. After all, the traditional approach to school was failing to provide far too many students—especially students of color and those from low-income families—with the opportunities they deserve long before anybody had ever heard of COVID-19.

Instead of simply recreating the pre-pandemic educational experience, school and system leaders should consider which new instructional models from the last year have the potential to improve that experience for historically marginalized students over the long term—and set aside a percentage of new federal funding to expand them. Many of these “innovations” have actually been in development for many years and their utility has been magnified through the pandemic. More specifically, leaders should take this opportunity to:

Expand our view of success: The pandemic has made it clear that we must focus on whole-child outcomes that include knowledge, habits, and skills. Logan County Schools in Kentucky has focused on developing their Profile of Success to name, teach, and grow skills beyond traditionally tested outcomes. Throughout the past year educators have come up with mentoring programs, varied schedules, leadership opportunities, personal schedules, and redesigned their class schedules to address the needs of the whole child. Many schools and systems have recognized the value of social-emotional learning, including building relationships and fostering both confidence and competence as learners. It is not sufficient to just teach the content. Instead, we have seen the value of teaching young people the skills to manage their responsibilities, find and use information, and learn to chart their own path to more holistic measures of success.

Adopt flexible learning schedules: The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) provides funds to help schools set up extended learning this summer and in 2021-22—and many students will need this extra instructional time in order to accelerate back to grade-level after the interrupted learning of the last year. But even as they look for ways to offer more total instructional time, schools may want to consider maintaining some of the flexibility students experienced over the last year around exactly when they access lessons or complete assignments. For example, Guilford County Public Schools proposed hubs being in the evening for students whose life circumstances prohibit them from attending during the day. Bedford County Public Schools has eliminated master schedules at secondary schools, instead of assigning 12-15 students to a “learning coach” who meets with students routinely to promote connectedness and to develop flexible schedules that meet the needs of each learner.

Create a wider range of instructional roles: Schools will need as many great teachers as possible to help students recover from this crisis—but that’s just a starting point. Over the last year, many communities recruited college students, parents, grandparents, clergy, retired educators, and professionals whose jobs were disrupted by the pandemic to offer mentoring, tutoring, and support for virtual learning. There’s no reason these partnerships shouldn’t continue—and expand—in the years ahead . Central Falls has hired people from the community to serve as “pod leaders.” Most hubs have students doing remote learning provided by the district, sometimes supported by non-certified staff (The Mind Trust / IPS, Miami-Dade, Cleveland, Chicago). Over the long run, these and other new roles may provide models for a more formalized “apprentice” approach to the teaching profession.

Deliver instruction in more ways: School systems and local governments have prioritized expanding access to high-speed internet connections and devices during the pandemic. Some students who thrived doing more self-directed virtual learning may benefit from having it remain part of their school experience even after buildings reopen. And there’s certainly no reason to undo the progress we’ve made narrowing the digital divide just because the pandemic is waning. For example, Dallas ISD is building on their personalized learning school model with a distance learning option for families. More flexible instructional delivery models could also help ensure fewer students drop out simply because they can’t be in a school building for six or seven hours a day—for example, high school students who work during the day to help support their family financially.

Strengthen partnerships with families: When school buildings closed, many families and caregivers took on new roles as assistant teachers. Schools relied on families to make virtual learning possible—which meant prioritizing clearer communication and greater transparency about the work students were expected to do in their classes each day. This focus on authentic partnership with families should continue even after in-person learning resumes—and no family should accept a return to being in the dark about their child’s day-to-day school experiences. To promote strong family partnerships, Oakland is hiring “family liaisons” to support parents and Vista Unified School District has developed a network of Family and Community Engagement (FACE) specialists.

Not all these approaches will work for every school system—or even for every school within a given system. Leaders should take stock of what they piloted over the last year and zero in on the options that showed the most promising results for students. Above all, that means asking students and families from all parts of the communities directly about what worked and what didn’t before making any decisions, rather than relying on assumptions.

While many systems have evolved specific aspects of their previous school model, others have completely redesigned their conception of the school itself. These innovations are also coming together in new models of “school,” including pandemic pods, hubs, and micro-schools that can leverage many of the flexible benefits of personalization with the important social elements of learning communities. In these new models, staffing and family engagement structures are also modified, frequently promoting higher levels of connectedness between students and adults. Leveraging the recent infusion of ARPA funding, educators anywhere and everywhere can make small steps to implement these new models by running afterschool and summer programs that incorporate elements of these innovative models.

Let’s not aspire to return to “normal” and instead use what we have learned and expand promising innovations to better serve all students. At this moment, with the challenges so daunting and the stakes for students so high, school systems can and should create a new and better normal to move forward.

For more, see:

• Why Instructional Design Matters In Your Content Plan
• Reimagining Family Engagement in the Time of Covid

Dan Weisberg is the CEO of TNTP, an education nonprofit that helps school systems across the country address educational inequities and achieves their goals for students.

Tim Hughes is the West Vice President at TNTP.

Katie Martin is the Chief Impact Officer of Altitude Learning and the author of Learner-Centered Innovation.

Devin Vodicka is the CEO of Altitude Learning and the author of Learner-Centered Leadership.  

Stay in-the-know with innovations in learning by signing up for the weekly Smart Update.

The post COVID Forced Schools to Innovate: Let’s Build on What They Learned appeared first on Getting Smart.

As we enter the one-year mark of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the magnitude of the challenges in education has disrupted the status quo and has compelled a general reconsideration of where we should focus our collective efforts for the optimal benefit of our students.  While terms such as “learning loss” are garnering significant attention, this is also a time when it may be helpful to step back and ask some foundational questions such as this: What is most important to our students?

Students want to be valued and to feel connected to their learning environment. For example, the Vista Unified School District (San Diego County, CA) conducted over sixty forums with students in 2013.  Students clearly articulated a desire to be recognized for their strengths, have more choices, extend their learning beyond the classroom, and progress at their own rates.  Students often expressed frustration about how much of their school experience is focused on individual achievement and that they craved social connectedness and peer interactions. Six years later, the same themes emerged; in a series of forums in 2019, the XQ Institute asked high school students what they wanted from school. Students want teachers who care about them as individuals.

When we listen to our students they tell us that they want to be engaged in learning, connected to school, motivated to learn, and persist amidst challenges. They want to feel connected to their teachers, peers, and to their learning environment. Unfortunately, our students have also been telling us that their experience does not match their aspirations.  Gallup has published data from a massive set of student surveys demonstrating that students tend to be less engaged in their learning as they matriculate from elementary to middle to high school.  In the highly-populated state of California, the 2019 California Healthy Kids Survey reported that only 53% of 11th grade students reported feeling connected to their school, a decline from just 62% in 7th grade.

All of this data was collected before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schooling, compelled social distancing, and has led to a significant level of stress and trauma among our students and throughout society.  While data is still being collected, it is almost certain that COVID has exacerbated challenges of engagement, belonging, and motivation with students and teachers feeling disconnected from peers, colleagues, and teachers amidst virtual learning. Many perceive a teacher’s role, and the role of school in general, is to ensure students master academic content and skills. Yet, teaching and learning is, at its core, a relational endeavor. Humans are social beings who learn from and thrive through connections with others. Thus, prioritizing relationship building — between teachers and students, students and peers, and teachers and colleagues – will support a positive learning environment that benefits students, teachers, and the broader community.  As a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences on teaching during a crisis notes, “The first priorities need to be equity and the health, well-being, and connections among students, families, and teachers.” This article focuses on the benefits of relationships for students.

How Relationships Benefit Students

High-quality relationships between students and teachers, and students and their peers, have academic and social benefits. Positive emotional states that spark interest, engagement, excitement, and positive emotional relationships, that involve trust, value, and empathy, allow for learning. Students of all ages flourish when their teachers are responsive to their needs, emotionally supportive, and set high expectations for all students. Students learn, perform best, and develop skills and confidence when their educational experiences provide high support to foster engagement, show them they belong and are valued, and are culturally sensitive to the students’ experiences and needs. Feeling connected, valued, and respected by peers is equally important for students’ sense of belonging and engagement in school. Being supported and valued engenders feelings of physical and emotional security, which benefits learning. Emotionally supportive and trustworthy relationships can buffer against the impacts of adversity and trauma (such as violence, crime, abuse, psychological trauma, homelessness, racism, food, and housing insecurity). Negative emotions, such as anxiety, lack of confidence, fear, and negative relationships, that involve coercion and punishment, reduce one’s capacity to learn.

All students will, at some point, feel stressed and experience moments of challenge (academic or social) and failure. To help students develop capacities to successfully manage stress and academic and social setbacks, educators can foster relationships and create emotionally and physically safe environments for students. These include interacting with each and every student, engaging in teaching practices that elevate student voice and creating a collaborative atmosphere between peers, teaching with a variety of diverse materials and strategies, and setting high expectations for all students.  Teachers can teach social skills and coping strategies. These include modeling empathy, respect, and compassion, teaching students calming strategies and how to effectively manage emotions, resolve conflicts, and create effective routines. These strategies, combined with supportive relationships with peers and teachers, empower students to believe they can succeed, even in difficult situations.

Taking Action

All educators have an opportunity to reframe our responsibilities and promote positive peer relationships. There are several research-backed strategies that we recommend to develop social and emotional learning capacities to support skills, mindsets, and practices that support learning

• Prioritize building a positive classroom environment in which students and teachers form positive, trusting relationships. Elevate student voice and promote their sense of belonging in the classroom community.
• Foster positive student behaviors by teaching social and emotional skills, intrapersonal awareness, and conflict resolution.  Model empathy and engage in instructional strategies that encourage self-directed learning and motivation.
• Provide opportunities to practice social-emotional skills and mindsets inside and outside of the classroom. These skills include self-awareness of one’s emotions and perceptions, self-management of stress and emotions, and social awareness such as empathy, cooperation, communication, and responsibility.
• View disciplinary problems as an indicator of a developmental need or skillset that needs to be taught. Such educative and restorative approaches to classroom management and discipline help teach students how to manage conflicts and self-regulate.

Illustrative Examples:  How to Focus on Relationships

Below we provide several illustrative examples to showcase how individual teachers, instructional specialists, principals, and schools have focused on building relationships. 

How One Teacher Sets Aside Time to Build Relationships with Students

In a 2018 Edutopia article entitled Simple Relationship-Building Strategies, Sean Cassel shared several strategies to overcome barriers to building relationships with students. For example, Sean noted that teachers’ time often is usurped by other professional duties which make it challenging to devote time to getting to know individual students. To overcome this, Sean sets aside time for one-on-one, get to know you, conferences. Sean notes that “students of all grade levels are more open to sharing individually and also better able to discover things about me.” To make meeting each student feasible, Sean schedules two, 5-minute conferences per week, which means it can take weeks to meet with each student. During these meetings Sean learns details about their academic and personal experiences.  When appropriate, Sean shares details of their lives with the larger class, so that students can also get to know each other better.

Sean begins each school year with an “All About Me” presentation in which students share 10 facts about themselves and include pictures or video. Sean does the same presentation first, to model what he is looking for and to allow students to better get to know him.  Sean notes that this activity can work with any age and subject and that teachers can modify it by asking a personal question about their discipline like, “How do you think physics plays a role in your everyday life?” or “Why do you think we need to learn geometry?” An added benefit – this activity can be done in-person or virtually.

How to Build Relationships Across the School (during a pandemic!)

In response to COVID-19 pandemic, the educational landscape changed dramatically. Schools shifted, almost overnight, to online instruction. As teachers, instructional specialists, principals, and schools rapidly prepared for academic instruction online, they were faced with an equally-daunting task; how to prioritize relationships during distance learning? As outlined in the National Academies of Sciences 2020 Publication entitled Teaching K-12 Science and Engineering During a Crisis, many rose to the occasion using inventive approaches.

For example, a K-5 science specialist (working in an East Coast urban school that primarily serves students from low-income families) responded to COVID-19 by providing weekly informal engineering engagement opportunities for students. During these engagements, students tried to identify real-life problems and possible solutions to them.  Students’ goal was to build the solution at home. To make this possible for these families, the science specialist partnered with local stores (such as Walmart, Costco, and Home Depot) that donated the building supplies. As noted in the report, these engagement hours were scheduled from 6 – 7 pm on Friday evenings, but students often requested to stay online chatting and sharing ideas and plans engineering designs until 9 pm! Students were so energized and excited by these opportunities that about 90 percent of students who had originally expressed interest, returned weekly for these sessions.

The school’s principal was so impressed by this and immediately recognized the need for building relationships with students, that the principal hosted a schoolwide virtual hangout every Friday. During these hangouts teachers and students danced and played guessing games, and the winner each week received a gift card for at least $25.

How One School Changed Their Culture to Focus on Positive Peer Relationships

Design 39, a public, K-8 school in the Poway Unified School District (San Diego County), has made social-emotional learning, collaboration, and relationships a top priority. Collaborative group work is a cornerstone of instruction and helps students develop relationship skills to establish and maintain supportive relationships and to effectively navigate diverse individuals and groups and social awareness skills to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others.  Every day students are randomly assigned a “table group” where they work with different students and each are assigned different roles in the group. This helps students learn to work together, each having a unique role to play in the collaboration. The goal of this table group is to foster experiences that help learners develop strong relationships, collaboration skills, and gain a deeper degree of self-awareness (an understanding of one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior).

Conclusion

Relationships are at the heart of meaningful learning.  We can and must attend to the social dynamics of learning by providing opportunities for students to develop their emotional awareness and skills by providing a safe, secure environment that promotes interaction in pursuit of creative problem-solving and conflict resolution. By shifting to learner-centered experiences, including the examples shared in this article, we can empower all students to know themselves, see themselves as full of possibilities, and shine as changemakers.

Want to Know More?

We hope you are inspired to take action!  Here are some additional resources that might help.

• Strengthening Relationships with Students from Diverse Backgrounds by the Regional Educational Laboratory Northwest
• Resources for Building Teacher-Student Relationships by Education Northwest
• Why you should care about how people are feeling by Katie Martin
• 10 strategies to get to know your students and create an inclusive learner-centered culture by Katie Martin

We encourage you to stay connected with the Global Science of Learning Network and to share your ideas on social media by using #GSOLN

This post was originally published at tdlc.ucsd.edu

Special thanks to Katie Martin for her feedback and ideation for this article.

Kristin Gagnier is the Director of Dissemination, Education, and Translation at the Science of Learning Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

Sabba Quidwai is an education researcher and host of the Sprint to Success with Design Thinking podcast.

The post Prioritize Building Relationships With Your Students: What Science Says appeared first on Getting Smart.

The magnitude of the current challenge is immense. In addition to creating health and safety challenges, COVID-19 has created massive disruptions, including declining enrollment and “learning loss” (with particularly concerning results for mathematics achievement), and also declines in college application rates. Educational programming has also been shifting from distance learning, to hybrid, to in-person, and back as waves of the pandemic have impacted communities. Teachers are also reporting exhaustion and fatigue as they have been adapting and learning in these extraordinary conditions.

Given the wide range of needs and the unusual circumstances of this moment, it is unlikely that a conventional summer program focused on remediation and credit recovery will be effective in engaging students for meaningful learning. So what should we do?

Fortunately, the Texas Learning Exchange (TxLx) has been developing resources to guide the development and implementation of effective learning experiences that can be helpful now and in the post-pandemic era. Here are six ways that school leaders can use the TxLx resources to support learner-centered summer program plans:

1. Set clear goals. Being clear about the goals you are trying to achieve is a critical first step to promote success. The TxLx School Instructional Supports Guide includes a section on “Whole-Child Outcomes: Redefining Instructional Goals” which provides frameworks to guide a planning process that promotes physical and emotional safety, active engagement, access to personalized learning, and academic challenge to prepare for college and career. There are also sections in the guide that promote support for staff to help manage stress and encourage wellbeing practices.

2. Engage families and community. The School Instructional Supports Guide also includes excellent suggestions to include community and families in your planning process (page 28), including:

• Starting a monthly virtual town-hall meeting with a rotating calendar for topics to prompt discussion
• Establishing a rotating panel of participants for leading discussions, presenting ideas and vetting questions in an open forum
• Setting up a shared email address such as “voices@yourschooldistrict.org”
• Using a virtual assistant for receiving transcribed phone calls
• Developing a set of communication protocols to foster participation in brainstorming
• Communicating examples of these and other practices from other exemplar schools

3. Manage the change process. Recognizing that these are unusual times, attention to change management and supportive leadership is particularly important. The TxLx EdTech Leadership Guide includes frameworks to guide others through the natural cycles of endings, neutral zones, and new beginnings (page 15).

4. Configure tech stacks for power and flexibility. Thoughtful and strategic integration of your core data infrastructure (Student Information System or SIS), instructional interactions (Learning Management System or LMS), and skills and content resources (Learning Object Repository or LOR) can promote efficiencies and effectiveness.

5. Leverage open educational resources (OER). OER can promote innovation and also provide flexibility for funds, allowing them to be redirected for other purposes. The TxLx OER Library includes over 250 free and open resources that are tagged by grade level, subject, and also by considerations such as dual-language support and interoperability.

6. Inspire innovative plans. The New Learning Models Library is a resource for school and district leaders to find a diverse framework of dimensions to innovate on. These models are found in various states and cities across the nation and include innovation opportunities that are not district specific but instead are school or program based and can serve as inspiration as districts and schools start their innovation strategy. As an example, Odyssey STEM Academy in Paramount Unified School District uses a place-based learning model and then validates learning through student-led conferences and portfolios where educators provide narrative feedback tied to whole-child outcomes.

This is a time to reframe our context and shift to a spirit of possibility. Let’s move away from “learning loss” and think about what we can do with “unfinished learning.” Instead of remediation, let’s orient ourselves to acceleration and getting a jump start on next year.

We encourage you to stay connected as the TxLx project continues to facilitate the sharing of resources, solutions, and best-practice models with districts to ensure students succeed despite these unprecedented times ahead. Together, we can create a new and better normal to ensure that our students are well-prepared for success now and in the future.

For more, see:

• Strategies and Considerations When Designing for Summer Learning
• What Does Your Ideal Learning Environment Look Like?
• Introducing the Texas Learning Exchange School Operations Guide

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In part one of our series we talked about the relationship between the importance of educators collaborating to design learning experiences. When designing collaborative environments where everyone thrives, developing relational trust is incredibly important as this work cannot be and should not be done alone. As was found in a comprehensive, multi-year research partnership with the University of California San Diego, improvements in the levels of trust were predictive of positive changes in many other important areas. In fact, “students’ trust in their educators (principal and teacher trust) has the highest average association with all areas that together make up the student’s school experience.”

A similar phenomenon was found when analyzing the level of trust that teachers had for their principals, where principal trust was found to have the highest overall association with areas that together make up the teacher’s daily experiences in their work, including collaboration between teachers, communication with parents, instructional practices, and equity beliefs.

What is trust? While there are many different definitions, we feel that it is important to ground our efforts on the work of Bryk and Schneider who conducted extensive research on relational trust. In their studies, they found that schools with high levels of relational trust were three times more likely to improve in academic achievement and those schools with low levels of relational trust showed little or no improvements.

Relational trust grows or decreases as a result of the interactions between two individuals. It is important to recognize that relational trust is dynamic (meaning that it changes over time) and it is specific to particular contexts and tasks. In short, while there is a tendency to generalize trust between people, the reality is that we trust one another to do specific things under specific conditions. As an example, a teacher may trust a colleague to co-plan an instructional unit but that does not mean that the teacher would trust the same colleague to co-host the school talent show. In addition, levels of trust are influenced by each person’s unique history and perspective.

Given the reality that relational trust is dynamic, contextual, and dependent on others, it is not possible to unilaterally improve trust. While building trust is complex, research does indicate that there are critical components that help to build (or erode) relational trust. We suggest that educators should be mindful of the “Four Elements of Trust” and intentional in their approach. The Four Elements are consistency, compassion, competence, and communication.

Recent research by Quidwai found a critical connection between relational trust, collaboration, and the development of mindsets and skillsets when engaging in design thinking through her doctoral study of Design 39 Campus in Poway, CA. Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process to complex challenges which seeks to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. (Interaction Design Foundation, 2020). Building a culture of empathy is the first step towards building a foundation of trust to foster social relationships and establishing shared norms and values within the organization (Edmonson, 1999). Amongst educators in particular, this leads to a culture of knowledge exchange, sharing of best practices and collaboration on lessons that have a direct impact on stronger learning outcomes for students (Moolenaar & Sleegers, 2010).

When surveyed, over 90% of the Learning Experience Designers (LEDs) see the value of integrating design thinking into the curriculum to develop the skills of creativity, problem finding, collaboration, and communication:

In addition the survey results indicated that creative confidence, empathy and learning from failure were seen as the strongest mindsets being developed, followed by iterating, making, comfort with ambiguity and then optimism

The performance improvement the LEDs see in the skills and mindsets their learners are mastering deepens their trust and collaborative work with one another when they each bring their “superpower” to the table. Establishing that everyone has a unique superpower, a strength that they bring to the table was a foundational element of collaboration. The topic of superpowers came up in all the interviews and as one LED shared, “we are capable of all things and if we had to do them we could, but our superpowers highlight what we are energized by and what brings us joy. It allows us to develop a deeper sense of empathy with one another because we understand that ok in collaboration you need this, I may not need that but by knowing this about each other we can help give each other what we need.”

Building off of these research insights, this article will provide framing for each of the four elements of trust along with suggested design protocols for educators.

Consistency & Competence

When we are in a relationship with others, there is a degree of vulnerability that is inherent in every interaction. As a result, we typically feel more safe in taking risks if we believe that we can rely on the other person. This is why definitions of trust often include predictability, reliability, and integrity. Being able to “count on” the other party is an essential element of relational trust.

Educators can model consistency by maintaining their commitments, adhering to routines, and implementing systems and procedures which build comfort and security. As one LED shared, “team here and collaboration does not mean we are being best friends it means can I trust you to show up and do your best.”

Getting things done well is a critical element of relational trust. It isn’t just what we say, but what we do that influences the level of trust throughout our interactions. Follow through on commitments is essential. In addition, we need to remember that being trusted with certain tasks (usually based on past performance) does not automatically mean that we are trusted with all things. Educators can model competence by achieving goals and celebrating successes.

One way to utilize a design approach to establishing consistency and competence is through the Team Canvas model.

Credit: Team Canvas. Click to launch a digital version you can use with your team

Compassion & Communication

Relational trust is more likely to exist when we feel cared about and connected to the other person. This occurs through meaningful interactions where we feel a sense of empathy and concern. Importantly, the research in this area shows that the care must be sincere and genuine. Expressions of compassion often include making exceptions and therefore an inherent tension exists between compassion and consistency. Educators can model compassion by taking time to learn about student strengths, interests, and passions and then adjusting and co-creating plans.

Communication is the exchange of information that conveys consistency, compassion, and competence. In other words, this can be an amplifier or a muffler for the first three elements of trust. The research here is also clear that receptive communication – how we receive information, particularly through listening during synchronous interactions – is more important than our expressive communications. Educators can model communication through active listening, soliciting input and feedback, and by clearly expressing their ideas. Maintaining confidentiality is also vital to maintaining trust.

One way to utilize a design approach to establishing compassion and communication is through the All In Method by Alexander Jamieson and Bob Gower from their book, “Radical Alignment: How to Have Game Changing Coversations That Will Transform Your Business and Life.” In this method each team member shares their intentions, concerns, boundaries and dreams.

Click to launch a digital version of the above template that you can use with your team. 

The four elements of trust are essential to create and sustain strong relationships. They are multi-dimensional and exist in tension to one another. Consistency, for example, is “intrapersonal” and internal while compassion is “interpersonal” and external. Competence and communication exist between dyads (two people) but also at the levels of organizations, communities, and networks. Emphasizing consistency often comes at the expense of compassion while competence and communication require time that is often at a premium. In other words, developing relational trust is hard work. And while it may be difficult, we know that relational trust forms the foundation for meaningful collaboration which is imperative for ongoing growth and transformation.

Connecting the abstract concepts of relational trust with the protocols and practices that we have suggested is done to provide concrete suggestions that can be done anywhere and at any time. As we have seen from innovative exemplar schools such as Design 39, the possibility for transcendent learning environments that create a “new grammar of schooling” is real and achievable. In the words of the educators at Design 39, it is also an ongoing process

One LED shared, “There is so much trust. We aren’t afraid to have a big idea because you have people who will help you take that idea, make it better and make it happen.”

Design39 is not a place where educators wait to be told what to do and when to learn. Rather, the culture at Design39 encourages and trusts the LEDs to personalize their learning and development as professionals, to seek out the resources and experiences that will enhance and develop their ability to define and design a new grammar of school and supports the LEDs by providing the time and space to dream, share and execute on their ideas. Seeing the radical transformation in their own teaching practice as LEDs, and witnessing their learner’s creativity, problem solving, communication and other trending skills and mindsets develop, increases the value for the ongoing integration of design thinking. At the heart of this process is a foundation of trust, rooted in consistency, compassion, competence, and communication.

Additional References

• Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
• Gower, B. & Jamieson, A. (2020). Radical alignment: How to have game changing conversations that will transform your business and life. Sounds True.
• Moolenaar, Nienke & Sleegers, Peter. (2010). Social networks, trust, and innovation. How social relationships support trust and innovative climates in Dutch Schools. Social Network Theory and Educational Change. 97-114.
• Quidwai, S. (2020). Defining and designing a new grammar of school with design thinking: A promising practice study. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Southern California
• Vodicka, D. (2006). The Four Elements of Trust. Principal Leadership, 7(3), 27-30.
• Vodicka, D. (2007). Social capital in schools: Teacher trust for school principals and the social networks of teachers. Doctoral Dissertation, Pepperdine University

For more, see:

• “I Could Never Do This Alone” – Collaboration, Trust, and Human-Centered Design at Design39
• Redesigning School: Six Key Pillars From Six of the Most Innovative Schools and Programs
• Time to Redesign is NOW

Dr. Sabba Quidwai is a social scientist, graduate of the Global Executive EdD program at the University of Southern California and a former high school Social Science teacher. Follow her on Twitter at @askMsQ. 

Devin Vodicka, Ed.D, is the Chief Impact Officer at Altitude Learning, author of Learner-Centered Leadership, and former superintendent of Vista Unified School District in San Diego, CA. Follow him on Twitter at @dvodicka.

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What if you no longer felt as if you were alone on your own island? Despite the unparalleled levels of burnout, stress, and frustration being experienced by educators across the globe, we’ve also seen everyone rise to the challenge with an increased enthusiasm for designing new systems and experiences to meet the needs of today’s learners. With the pandemic revealing the stark inequities and inadequacies across education in preparing learners for their world, the story of Design39 Campus serves as an inspiring national exemplar. Design 39 Campus, a TK-8 public school in San Diego, California uses design thinking to define and design a new grammar of school for The Fourth Industrial Revolution providing students with the knowledge, skills, and mindsets so that they can thrive in future workplaces as life ready thought leaders who elevate humanity.

A New Grammar of School

In 1994, education historians David Tyack and William Tobin wrote, “The Grammar of Schooling: Why Has It Been So Hard to Change,” where they made an observation that like languages, schools have a set of grammatical rules and structures such as dividing knowledge into subjects, age-based grouping, the division of time and space. During the industrial era and the years that followed, these became so well established, that despite the rapid changes taking place around us in today’s world no one really questions why we engage in outdated and exhausting practices increasingly taking a toll on our health and wellness. When we refer to a “new grammar of school” we are suggesting that the source code itself has been modified in such a way that comparisons with existing approaches become difficult if not impossible.  This involves new systems, new structures, and new language as well. As an example, at Design 39 their educators are called “Learning Experience Designers” (LEDs).

Teachers as Learning Experience Designers

Principal Joe Erpelding is guided by the mantra “the future is a place we create.” Erpelding recognizes that individuals cannot and should not have to do this work alone. If educators are to have the time and space needed to define and design a new grammar of school, then leaders need to create the conditions for educators to thrive.

At Design39 Campus they begin this journey with the following question: What are you energized by? This question forms the foundation for collaboration as they recognize we can’t be great at everything, but we are all great at something. That something is your superpower that you bring to the table.

For deep and meaningful collaboration to occur amongst the LEDs there must also be a culture that nurtures a high level of relational trust. Bryk and Schneider, Tschannen-Moran, Daly, Vodicka, and others have written extensively on the importance of trust in schools. Significantly, the high levels of relational trust and collaboration provide the foundation for a radical shift away from hierarchical systems and structures and allow for a more organic, networked model.  A necessary and profound result of this approach is a concurrent shift in authority, which moves away from an externally-oriented, compliance-driven focus to one that embraces agency and empowerment from individuals and teams.  Radical connectivity thereby leads to radical change.

Promising Practice Study: Design39 Campus

A new study by Quidwai examines how Design39 Campus defined and designed a new grammar of school. The methodology for this study was a mixed-methods approach to gather data for analysis, using qualitative and quantitative data including surveys, interviews, observations, and document analysis. The participating stakeholders were the Learning Experience Designers from K-8. Their experience ranged from 2 to 30+ years of teaching. An online survey was sent to all 54 learning experience designers at Design39, with a 100 percent completion rate. In addition, a selected group of members from each of the grade-level teams was interviewed together as a focus group. Grade level teams are organized as K-3, 4-5, and 6-8. A random selection of six LEDs was then interviewed individually. Observations of learning experiences throughout the day and of the LEDs planning in their collaboration space known as the Design Studio was conducted. The gathered data were then analyzed to determine the validity of the assumed knowledge, motivation, and organizational assets related to their performance.

A Culture of Collaboration

A unanimous sentiment shared across all LEDs was that design thinking is an excellent approach to designing learning experiences for all learners, however, it required a strong collaborative effort. When asked what they believe made them successful in doing the work they do at Design39, they all attributed their success to the people that they work with. As one LED shared, “We have nine brains working together instead of just one.”

Over 70% of the LEDs interviewed shared that before Design39 they had felt as if they were isolated in their classroom. As one LED shared, “Before if I wanted to do a project I had no thought partners, I had no one to bounce ideas off of, it doesn’t matter how supportive your administration is it’s just really hard to do alone.” Another LED built on this and shared, “When I think about instruction, I think about how many standards can I merge into an experience. Many of the standards overlap. You can’t integrate and create experiences that nurture deeper learning on your own, you need the different lens of STEM, History and English. They shouldn’t say this is this subject or this is that they should have the flow throughout the day and that’s what we can create when we are working together.”

These sentiments shared by the LEDs present a fundamental tenet of engaging in design-based work – content is not taught in isolation, nor do people work in isolation. In an analogy presented by David Perkins, he shares how in the game of baseball we don’t spend a month learning just how to catch and then another month learning just how to bat and another month learning how to throw. Instead of isolating each area, all of the knowledge, skills, and mindsets needed to thrive as a baseball player are integrated and connected to a game as a whole. Learning experiences, Perkins says, should be conducted in the same way to allow for deeper learning. Seeing this actualized in their work each and every day with their learners was a notable value shared by the LEDs. Not only did the integration of design thinking lead to deeper learning, but the LEDs were also developing a nuanced understanding of their learners’ individual growth and development, further increasing their intrinsic motivation to persist in cross-curricular collaboration with other LEDs. This knowledge and empowerment in seeing themselves as design thinkers have also given the LEDs a greater sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Daniel Pink identified these three elements as giving individuals the “drive,” to motivate themselves in the workplace. In the case of Design39, providing LEDs with a culture of collaboration fuels their motivation to define and design a new grammar of school.

When interviewed, almost every LED shared how at Design39 they felt trusted, they felt safe, they felt vulnerable and above all, they felt like they were treated like professionals. In fact, when surveyed about how supported LEDs felt by their leadership when trying new methods of teaching, an overwhelming 94% agreed or strongly agreed.

Vulnerability and Trust

Understanding the value of collaboration is key when considering transformation.  The next logical question becomes: “what is required for meaningful collaboration?” The research on this topic clearly indicates that effective collaboration requires relational trust between the collaborators.  Trust itself is a challenging concept, and relational trust focuses on the interactions between two or more people.  When individuals interact with one another, each person makes determinations regarding how much they are willing to share based on their perceptions of safety and risk in the exchange.  In other words, the more that we extend and open ourselves, the more that we must be vulnerable in the interaction.  If we do not feel safe and secure in the interaction, we are less likely to be vulnerable which leads to superficial interactions instead of deep, meaningful relationships.

The concept of vulnerability was a key theme in the interviews with the team members from Design 39.  In order to create a school culture where vulnerability is the norm, risk-taking must be encouraged and “failures” must be seen as lessons learned.  With respect to Design 39, here the context of the interactions between staff is influenced by the pedagogical orientation to human-centered design thinking.  Interestingly, there exists a reciprocal cycle where the emerging culture of vulnerability ultimately allowed the LEDs to continue mastery of their craft in collaboration with others to integrate design thinking to define and design a new grammar of school.

The connections between the culture of the school and the learning model orientation to human-centered design thinking manifest themselves in other important ways.  For example, just as design thinking emphasizes risk-taking and collaboration, it also encourages the pursuit of connections from diverse perspectives.  In addition to empathy as part of the design process which requires people to not work in isolation, what follows is that content is also not taught in isolation. We are therefore not surprised to see that Design39 provides an array of interdisciplinary experiences.  This example illustrates one of the many benefits of having shared values and a commonly understood learning model to guide and sustain ongoing collaborative efforts.

While every member of the community has a responsibility and influence in the ongoing development of the school culture and climate, those with formal authority have a significant effect with respect to a critical feature such as risk-taking, thereby impacting the staff members’ willingness to extend vulnerability to one another.  As found in Vodicka’s dissertation study (2007), the level of relational trust that teachers held for the principal was associated with their level of social connectedness with other teachers.

We should therefore not be surprised that at Design39 the culture of innovation is built on a foundation of trust and collaboration. A community where diversity of ideas, personalities, and skills is nurtured and valued. The culture at Design39 marks a radical shift in education organizations from power and decisions that are traditionally made externally to a culture of radical connectivity amongst the individuals who make up the organization and their ideas.

For more, see:

• Donna McDaniel on Real World Learning 
• Getting Clearer: Career and Technical Education 
• 5 Recommendations to Improve Remote Learning 

Sabba Quidwai is a social scientist, a graduate of the Global Executive EdD program at the University of Southern California, and a former high school Social Science teacher.

Devin Vodicka is the Chief Impact Officer at Altitude Learning, author of Learner-Centered Leadership, and former superintendent of Vista Unified School District (San Diego, CA).  

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