Zen and the Art of Professional Learning Communities

As I was reading about simplicity in my morning meditations, I was struck by how PLCs bring simplicity and clarity to teaching.

• There is no teaching without learning.
• Clarify:  What must our students know and be able to do?
• How do you know if students know it and can do it?  This doesn't have to be a heatmap or a pivot table.  Just ask yourself, "How do you know?"
• Can you show us how you know?  Otherwise it's not knowledge - it's faith.
• What do you do when students don't know?  Stop using the schedule as an excuse.
• What do you do when students already know?  If students already know, then you're not teaching, because they're not learning.

Furthermore:

• Do you average grades?  That means that you think that penalizing early failure is more important than mastery.
• Do you give zeroes?  That means that you think that "work ethic" is more important than content.  You are free to believe that, but you should report that separately.  Content mastery and compliance should not be co-mingled in the same grade.  
• Do you give homework to parents?  You know what I mean - projects that require trips to the office supply store, reading logs, practice cards, etc.
• Do you work in isolation?  That means you think you have nothing to learn and nothing to share.  That means you divide the world into "my kids" and "their kids."

PLCs are difficult because true simplicity is difficult.  However, the premise is above reproach. 

Clarify expectations.  Monitor results.  Adjust instruction and support.

That is all.  What else could there be?

Does your school need a school improvement plan for creativity?

Does your school need a school improvement plan for creativity?

Spoiler Alert:  yes.

In their Newsweek article "The Creativity Crisis," Bronson and Merryman cited a poll that indicated that creativity is considered the critical leadership competency by CEOs (http://www.newsweek.com/creativity-crisis-74665).

Dan Pink wrote a blog post about how China is embracing creativity in education (http://www.danpink.com/2010/07/quote-of-the-day-the-real-reason-china-is-laughing-at-the-us/). He posted about the misalignment between business and school superintendents regarding the most important elements of creativity (http://www.danpink.com/2009/01/the-problem-with-problems/).  He also suggested that the Great Recession might have been due in part to the actions of people who lacked long-range, empathetic, or imaginative thinking (http://www.danpink.com/2008/10/too-many-left-brains-spoil-the-pot/).

Let's pause for a moment.  These are not calls for personal expression and fulfillment from the hippy-dippy crowd.  These are arguments for creativity that are rooted in economic development.

Then, let's acknowledge that there are many who consider the economic justification of education anywhere from short-sighted to nefarious.  For many, education is about the development of the whole person in order to lead a more fulfilling life.

Everywhere you look, creativity is cherished.  And yet, it is systematically excluded from school improvement plans, primarily due to lack of accountability pressure via standardized testing.

Do we measure what we treasure, or vice versa?

The PLC process does not need to be the enemy of the fine arts.  Robert Eaker published an article about including art in school improvement plans (http://www.allthingsplc.info/files/uploads/ArtEducationAndTheEffectiveSchools.pdf).  I say, if it's important enough for one of the primary PLC authors, it's important enough for your school.  Let's move past school improvement plans with two goals.

Stop using SMART goals, PLCs, and standardized testing as excuses to marginalize the arts. We can make this work, but only if we acknowledge its importance.

Teacher Evaluation and Creativity

We've all seen the posters.  Music is math, music is reading, music is history, etc., but most of all, music is music.

Why put the most important thing last?

Fine arts educators have to admit some culpability here.  Because we are not regarded as a core subject by the average person, we have worked hard to advocate for ourselves.  That often includes attempts to highlight the non-artistic benefits of arts education.

Unfortunately, some educators are reaping what we have sown.  After decades of comparing the arts to so-called academic subjects, fine arts teachers are now being evaluated on reading and math.  These teachers often feel de-valued, and are rightfully concerned about the validity and reliability of such measures.

We need to refresh our efforts, and we need to Start with Why.

The purpose of the fine arts is not to improve literacy and mathematics.  Indeed, visual art was often used to convey ideas to pre-literate citizens.  One purpose of art is to create works in a medium that embody feelings.

The Why has three parts:  creativity, the medium, and feelings.  If this is Why we have fine art, then these elements should drive instruction.  Teacher evaluation should examine the effectiveness of this instruction - not literacy and mathematics.

Many Professional Learning Communities get caught up in the wrong Why by assuming that creativity cannot be assessed.  This leads these PLCs to rely on standardized literacy tests to evaluate fine arts teachers.  However, we can clearly assess whether something is novel, expressive, or engaging.  We do it all the time in our daily life.

While there are many technical papers about the assessment of creativity, fine arts educators might have better luck citing Grant Wiggins when trying to convince PLC administrators of this point.  Wiggins is the co-author of the widely used Understanding by Design framework, and he is a known and respected name in the field.  Wiggins states simply that we can assess creativity, and we should assess creativity.  Check out his outstanding article at http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/on-assessing-for-creativity-yes-you-can-and-yes-you-should/

Fine arts educators have always needed to educate stakeholders about the value of our work.  However, we are now seeing the dark side of over-selling arts education.  Let's redouble our efforts, but let's stay focused on the right Why.  It's the only way to have genuine advocacy.

Teacher Evaluation - Start with Why!

Welcome back to Round Pegs!  We took a bit of a summer break.

Teacher evaluation came up again.

"High stakes tests are fine for tested subjects.  What about fine arts, technical arts, or physical education?"

The stock answer:  "Everybody is a literacy teacher.  Evaluate teachers on literacy."

If the feelings embedded in the fine arts could be expressed in words, we would have no need for the fine arts.  Stravinsky once said that "music means itself."  The arts can produce a visceral response that a description of the arts cannot.  But we can even make a distinction between artistic writing and descriptive writing.  John Ciardi wrote How Does a Poem Mean because the question "What Does a Poem Mean" is silly.  As if Emily Dickinson couldn't express herself cogently, so we need a professor to translate for us.

To be fair, I want literate citizens, and reading and writing are among the Mother Subjects.  But when we evaluate fine arts teachers on literacy outcomes, we start with the wrong Why.  "Because We Don't Have Standardized Arts Tests" isn't a good reason to hold teachers accountable for literacy.

But what happens if we meet the CCSS crowd half way?  Let's say that everybody is responsible for every student's literacy score.  What portion of student growth would you attribute to the high school band director?  What portion goes to the 8th grade visual arts teacher?  How about the 5th grade theater teacher?

Here's the answer:  none of the above.  This level of confidence in statistics is pure hubris.  But don't take my word for it.  Read https://www.amstat.org/policy/pdfs/ASA_VAM_Statement.pdf to see the position of the American Statistical Association.

Start with Why.  Why do we teach the arts?  The answer is not to improve literacy.

For more information, check out Simon Sinek's TED talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

Arts Education and A More Beautiful Question - A Masterclass with Warren Berger, Part 2

This is the second post in a series about the best-selling A More Beautiful Question and its lessons for fine arts education.

Warren Berger gives us a three-part framework for improving innovation:  ask why, what if, and how.

Imagine how our classrooms might be transformed by starting with why:

Why did the composer mark these notes staccato? 

Why did Shakespeare choose these words? 

Why did Ansel Adams photograph in black and white? 

Why does (or doesn't) this choreography capture the mood?

Questions drive creativity and innovation.  As arts educators, we are in the creativity business.  We must keep the spark of inquiry alive in our students.

The new National Core Arts Standards (www.nationalartsstandards.org) are written with Essential Questions for each Anchor Standard. Using these questions effectively can promote engagement, and they can enable students to transfer their learning to other situations or disciplines (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).  Since information is a Google search away, and modern problems require creative solutions, the concept of transfer is critically important to the future of education.

But don't take my word for it.  John Hattie conducted synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses of educational research.  Creativity programs have a high effect on achievement (d=0.65), as does questioning (d=0.46).  Inquiry-based teaching has a medium effect (d=0.31).

Unleash the creative power of your students by questioning rather than answering!

References

Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York, NY: Bloomsbury

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London, UK: Routledge

Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Arts Education and A More Beautiful Question - A Masterclass with Warren Berger, Part 1

Warren Berger's brilliant book A More Beautiful Question is a hit on the creativity and innovation scene.  It currently has an Amazon rank of #8 in neuroscience, #14 in decision-making and problem solving, and #23 in entrepreneurship.

Credit:  warrenberger.com

Berger seems to have a kinship with the arts - the title is taken from a line by the poet e.e. cummings.

The premise of the book is disarmingly simple but profound in its implications:  If questioning is the engine of innovation, why aren't we doing more to develop that skill?

His answer is spot on.

"To encourage or even allow questioning is to cede power - not something that is done lightly in hierarchical companies or in government organizations, or even in classrooms, where a teacher must be willing to give up control to allow for more questioning" (2014, p. 6).

Berger developed a three part framework - Why/What If/How - to guide us through the stages of inquiry.  He defines a beautiful question as "...an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something - and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change" (2014, p. 8).

Berger explores school's dampening effect on productive inquiry.  Fortunately, a solution is at hand, if only educators will take full advantage of the methodology.  Wiggins and McTighe used research about expert understanding to develop a revolutionary approach to unit design.  Understanding by Design starts with the Big Ideas that distinguish expert understanding from a mere accumulation of factoids.  They describe the Enduring Understandings that are necessary to grasp those Big Ideas.  But perhaps most importantly, they describe Essential Questions that serve as "hooks" to engage student interest and provide entry paths into the Big Ideas (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).

A serious and sustained application of the principles of Understanding by Design could go a long way in closing the gap that Berger has exposed.

Let's follow Berger's lead for a moment.  Why do arts educators - especially arts educators in a PLC - care about this issue?

Arts educators can feel comfortable developing a questioning environment because we work in a discipline where there is usually more than one "right answer" - if indeed one exists. Arts educators in a PLC know our work is driven by questioning - specifically the four questions of the PLC process:

1. What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do our students need to have?
2. How do we know if they have acquired them?
3. What do we do if they have not acquired them?
4. What do we do if they have already acquired them?

One of the skills and dispositions that our students need to have is questioning.  Arts educators can include that in our curriculum.  We can teach for it, we can assess for it, and we can support students who fall short of our expectations.

What if arts educators used questioning to drive learning?

How can we do that?

The answers are the keys to the kingdom.

References

Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York, NY: Bloomsbury

Wiggins, G., and McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA:  ASCD

An Arts Education Hippocratic Oath - Do No Harm!

This is the final post in a series about lessons to be learned from innovation expert Teresa Amabile.

In Growing Up Creative, bestselling Harvard professor Teresa Amabile has a chapter called "How to Destroy a Child's Creativity."  Arts educators should heed these suggestions in the same way that doctors pledge to do no harm.

Amabile cites the following problems as creativity killers:

1. Teacher attitudes:  controlling teachers or teachers with low expectations 
2. Rote learning
3. Fear of failure
4. Conformity pressure
5. "The system" (1989, pp. 87-89)

"The system" refers to the inverse relationship between years in school and creative self-concept.  Many speakers and writers have discussed schooling's apparent negative effect on creativity.  The most popular of these speakers is currently Sir Ken Robinson - his TED talk on the subject is the most viewed video on the TED website (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity).

While there is no doubt that the fine arts require that specific knowledge, skills, and dispositions need to be mastered, the timing and nature of critical feedback is important. Arts educators must walk a fine line between guiding students and killing creativity.  To make things more challenging, this line is always moving.  Every student has a different line, and even that line may change from day to day based on the student's emotional state.

Professional Learning Communities can play a critical role in helping teachers find this line. Collaboration helps us in at least two critical areas:  it gives us a bigger back of pedagogical tricks, and it helps us know our students better.

Arts educators, let's work together to follow an Artistic Hippocratic Oath.  Let's learn from each other so that we never destroy creativity!

References

Amabile, T. (1989). Growing up creative: Nurturing a lifetime of creativity. New York: Crown Publishers