Joyce Irvine was the Principal at Wheeler Elementary School in Vermont.  I don’t know Joyce Irvine, I hadn’t heard about Wheeler Elementary before I read about it in the NY times today and I don’t profess to be an expert on the school now.  I use the example to illustrate my point about the need to measure more than IQ in standardized tests.  We need to measure the EQ and SQ components as well if people insist on using large high stakes testing.

But Today I am deeply saddened for the entire Wheeler Elementary School community.

You see Ms Irvine was removed as Principal of Wheeler Elementary not because she was doing a poor job, not because the community had issues with her school management, not because the students at the school had poor relationships with her.  In fact the district Superintendent gave her great performance reviews and praise.

She was removed because the school wanted a $3 million grant.

You see the US Federal Government has a few programs to help schools with additional funding fix their low test results.  Schools where the national test results don’t meet the growth targets expected or the baselines predicted by some academic.  Basically, grants to help schools that aren’t progressing on some performance scale that I don’t really understand or want to go into.  The point is this – to qualify for this particular grant the school, or the district I guess, must impose some conditions on the school.  This district choose to remove Ms Irvine as Principal and thus qualify for the grant.

You see Wheeler Elementary is a school that apparently has very low national or standardized tests results.  But when you dig under the surface even just a little bit you find that apparently many of the Wheeler Elementary students are from refugee or special-ed backgrounds – the example sited in the article is 37 out of 39 5th graders.  Surely this factor alone would make it harder for the school to meet some state or national benchmark.

So the question has to be asked – why was Ms Irvine removed?

The only answer I can come up with is – because $3 million of funding to improve the IQ domain test results of students was viewed as far more important than the detrimental impact on their EQ or SQ stability.

I personally am aware of another school that had their funding cut for the same reason and the student body was devastated.  Most of the students were from different countries and couldn’t manage the language as well as the students born in the US.  Most of the students were trying so hard to have the school keep their funding that when the funding fell through, they took it personally; after all, they had given their personal best to the endeavor!

I have to believe that someone somewhere in a remote office in a far away place is receiving feedback about their grant qualification process.  I also need to believe that someone in the office next door is assessing the results on a lot of standardized tests of students from international backgrounds and briefing a Government official about the inherent unfairness built into the test analysis regime.

You see the problem is not in the actual test, but in the interpretation of the data and what the results actually mean.

Anyway back to Ms Joyce Irvine – I am deeply saddened for you and the community for which you worked with over the past 6 years.  I am sorry that you personally have been caught up in the terrible regime of narrowly interpreting national and standardized tests results.

I have gone through life with this mantra in the front of my mind.  Remember To Remember Who You Are

My thoughts go to Ms Joyce Irvine the Wheeler Elementary School community and to all the communities that may be negatively impacted by this process.

I hope that someday we can find a better way to balance the societal imbalances that lead to these kinds of outcomes.

We have, after all, sent men to the moon, expanded our research into the secrets of the human brain, found vaccines to stop horrific diseases and on we go in our expansion of knowledge.  May we now bring wisdom to bear on the educational needs of a population that comes from varying backgrounds and different demographics.  Every one of these students has something to offer if we can just open the way.

So with these programs in mind I read with interest this article on the NY Times website – Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality.  The article basically highlights a couple of US studies showing not an improvement in academic outcomes for students, but actually a decline in academic performance during the introduction of laptop computers to low socio-economic households.

So this got me thinking.  Lots of questions not many answers yet!

Why do we expect that simply supplying new tools will improve students’ IQ?

Should we evaluate technology programs like these outside of the IQ domain?

Maybe the student outcome improvements are actually in the EQ and SQ domains.  Maybe the improvement is around self-esteem and a sense of personal connection with teachers and support staff.

Maybe providing students who have very little, is more about allowing them to feel like their peers who already have the technology.  Maybe its about removing a social stigma and helping them to experience their own self-worth, as opposed to leaping their IQ.

I can’t answer these questions, but I hope someone can, at some stage!

But what I do know is education is more than supplying the latest tools, the best resources and the nicest classroom.  These things help, but they are not the complete picture.  Education is about relationship and that must encompass the emotional and social literacy that I keep talking about.

If tools like computers allow students from families with little to feel like everyone else, then I say roll out the one-to-one laptop programs FAST! If that is not the case, let’s find out what is and work from there!

Intervention on rumors… intervention on isolation and bullying… intervention on taunting… intervention on internet harassment… intervention on ‘sexting’…

Why are our students so dissatisfied that they are taking out their angst on other students?

I believe it is because we have somehow missed the point.  And what’s the point?

The point is P3 – purposeful prevention programs. These are programs based on and directed towards the whole child.  These are programs that inspire the mind and heart, increase curiosity, and involve students in the solutions.  These are programs that balance IQ training with emotional and social skill training.  These are programs that deliver methods and strategies so that students can achieve their dreams.

Many of the professions our students will be engaging in during their careers do not exist today.  We cannot fit our students for a time and a set of trades that we don’t even know about nor understand.

But we can encourage their intellectual endeavors, model and teach emotional well-being and self-control.  We can help them increase their awareness of who they are.  We can help them discover their gifts and talents.

It’s about time, don’t you think?

Maybe someday intervention programs will become an historical relic.

Donald Clark wrote an excellent article on spaced practice as a prime method to increase retention anywhere from 200-700%.

I’d like to further the list with 3 more ways to increase student retention as well as a giving you a practical activity for the upper primary and middle years.

The 3 ways to increase retention are:

• Storyboards
• Talk and share
• The Y chart review

Here is a 5 step method of using these items in a structured way to increase retention around a core subject:

1. Storyboard – Using symbols, color, images and words, students record their insights, learning and ideas from the lesson.
   

   This is a 15 Years olds notes from a session I did on changing habits and listening

2. Talk and Share – Debrief the lesson with paired or triad share.  Have each partner share their storyboard and add one thing to their board from their partner’s insights and ideas.
3. Y Review – Within 24-48 hours have students work in teams on a piece of butcher paper.  Ask them to make a Y chart with ideas, insights and learning in each of the different areas.  Debrief with full room share.
4. Placemat Team – 52-72 hours later have students work in teams to do  a placemat activity review on butcher paper.  The four areas might be: ideas, insights, learning, link to other learning.
5. Weekly Popper – At the end of the week throw a ‘popper’ or pop quiz without the word ‘quiz’.  Hand out blank storyboards and ask students to fill in the nine boxes with nine ideas, insights, learning, links to other learning, and other items of choice.

Here are some sample Y Charts and Placemats that go along with these activities.

Whilst watching Sir Ken I was reminded about one of my early years in the classroom.  I was teaching the 5th Grade at the time.  During that year I decided that the class would start a program focused on the students developing their own goals.  Being a young and somewhat naive new teacher I thought I had discovered a method of each student engaging in the academic process and personally setting their own academic goals.

So I allocated some time each week for the students to write their personal goals. After the first session, I asked the students if they would mind if I read their goals.  In my mind my students would be setting goals for academic improvement and I would help them by coaching them for academic improvement.

So that night with my students’ permission I took their files home and read their entries. I already had the lessons planned in my mind on how to deal with some of the academic problems my students were facing.

To my shock the students had written approximately 4 or 5 goals each, yet there was only one academic goal in all of the entries.

Most of the goals were emotional and social self-management goals.  One student wanted to get along better with his younger brother.  He wanted to know how to not get frustrated at his baby brother when the younger sibling took his stuff.  My student had realised that when he gets frustrated with his younger brother his natural reaction was to snatch his own stuff back.  The younger boy would then cry, Mom would then get angry with him and impose a punishment.

I had not prepared a set of lessons on how to deal with younger brothers taking stuff!

My planned academic excellence program had just morphed at light speed into a Mentoring and Coaching program.

I developed new lesson plans over the next few months working on patience, respect and communication in short 10 minutes sessions.  Basically we worked on things from the EQ and SQ domains and nothing from the IQ realm.

As the sessions continued more and more students asked for help with their specific challenges.  Without exception my students had laid down their dreams before me.  I had the choice to focus on the academic or to tread softly amongst their dreams and see where I could add value.

Thank you Sir Ken Robinson, I too believe that our Education System is broken and in need of a revolution!  I hope that I bring a small revolution to the teachers, principals and classrooms that I personally touch.

I believe in results and outcomes.

I understand results come from action and focus.

I think in terms of focus, then action and finally the results.

So if I turn my attention onto the education of students, I see that schools focus primarily on intellectual development.  Obviously intellectual development is important, and shows up in scores in math, reading comprehension, English, science.  The results in all core subjects areas are directly related to the amount of time and energy spent on these subjects.

What about the social and emotional development of our youth?  Where do you think those results might show up on a school’s report card?

From my perspective it shows up in classroom behavior, schoolyard interactions, as well as student dealings with teachers, administrative staff and each other throughout the campus.  It shows up in how students communicate with each other.

Most schools review the numbers of principal referrals and bullying incidents.  Some schools might interview teachers on the classroom management issues they are facing.  All of these give us information regarding the job we are doing as educators.

Measuring Emotional and Social Literacy on a scale like that used for intellectual development is much harder.  It might even be an illusive ideal to have a school wide measure for these things.  But it might be time to start thinking along these lines.

The community in which your school, your family and in fact my family and friends live is dependent on us measuring and developing the emotional and social well being of students in our classrooms.

The community we want tomorrow is dependent on the results of schools today.

I have developed life-long friendships that will live forever in my heart.  And I pray that a bit of my heart lives on in the lives of the people I have touched.

My personal gift from this journey has been one utmost central and important lesson. 

The world is full of people and all these people are unique and truly beautiful with their own set of beliefs, strengths and insecurities.  And these uniquely human pieces are just amazing when they come together and act as one.

This lesson sparked me 20-odd years ago to begin formulating my ideas that today, I call my Whole Person Learning Model.  Where each person is a combination of their Intellectual Qualities, their Emotional Qualities and their Social Qualities – IQ, EQ, SQ.

As an American I lived through the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) period of a previous administration.  I personally saw the impact such policies had on teacher morale and principal self-esteem.  This week sees Australian schools complete their national tests.  Governments all around the world are currently, or at present planning, such national tests.  I guess these tests are now part of the landscape of our schools.

But these tests have made me pause for a moment and reflect.

If my 30+ years of work with people has had any impact, I need to think about the Whole Person in these testing regimes.  How do tests of literacy and numeracy measure the Whole Person?  Aren’t schools more than literacy levels?  Isn’t the IQ, EQ, SQ balance of a child, classroom, school or entire system important?  Don’t we need to reflect on the fact that good schools might have low numeracy levels.  Yet these same schools may be developing human beings that will make an incredible impact on the world in years to come?

I have to believe that the decision makers who are rolling out these national tests must be asking these very same questions themselves.

These questions are not easily answered and I don’t have  the answers myself.  In fact, I am not even sure that I have any answers.  What I do know is that my education over 60-odd years has instilled in me a need to ask the hard questions.  Because of this, I am willing to live ‘in the question even though I can’t always answer it.  I am willing to live in the paradox of questions without the certainty of closure.  I feel that the questions are important to our students and the future generations to come.

These questions and this thinking lead to this whitepaper – Beyond Standardised Tests – in which I try to think through this issue.  I hope you read it and it triggers some of your own questions.  I hope it prompts you to stop and give pause for a moment too.  And please, once you’ve read the piece let me know your thoughts whether in email or the comments section below.

Beyond Standardised Tests Whitepaper

When teaching values or character skills to young people you need to remind yourself about the comfort zone.  Every individual has a zone of habits where they are comfortable, if we stretch this comfort zone too far the student will shutdown emotionally and not take in the lesson. If the step is to small the student might get bored and again zone-out of the lesson.

With the comfort zone in mind, this lesson is designed to allow the student to express some feelings without the need to exhibit their feelings to the entire class.

Materials You Need:

1. Colored Paper
2. Pens or Pencils
3. Scissors
4. Writing Paper

Classroom Discussion:

Use the definition I posted earlier this week and the explanation that I provided for your middle years students to begin a full class discussion on Respect.  Take a pop culture figure relevant to your students, maybe singer or an actor.  Have the group define why this person should or shouldn’t be Respected.

Ensure that you conclude the discussion with a link to the Social Qualities (SQ) attributes of a kind and caring human being.

Small Group Activity:

Now that the group discussion has provided a model for the students to follow, ask students to pick a person in their family that they really respect, someone that is a role model for them.  What qualities does this person exhibit?  Why do they respect this person?  Ask each student to write 3 or 4 things they respect about this person.

Then ask the students to form groups of 3 or 4 to share their thoughts with the others.

Conclude the activity by giving the students coloured pens or pencils, coloured paper and scissors.  Have them draw and cut out a star that represents the person that they respect. Then put that person’s name in the center of the star. Have each student also sign their name below their star. Make a bulletin board of the stars in your students’ lives.

Respect is defined as having high regard and actions that demonstrate honor and esteem for another person or entity.

Here is a definition that can be used with your Middle School Students:

Respect is a very special quality. It is a basic feeling between human beings. If you have respect, you are considerate, courteous, and caring. Respect is so important that songwriters even wrote a song about it.

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Find out what it means to me”

Student Engagement
In order to get students involved in the lesson I suggest that you play Aretha Franklin’s song (as noted above) and then open the class by asking what respect means to them. Here are some questions that might help you initiate a lesson on respect:

1. What does respect mean to you?
2. Do friends demonstrate respect to one another? In what ways?
3. Is respect important in the family? Why? And how is respect demonstrated between siblings, child to parent, etc.?

Discussion

Respect is an attitude of caring. There are many types of respect and all of them are important.

There is self-respect, and respect for others. There is respect for property and respect for our environment. All types of respect are important.

Self-respect means that you value yourself. You feel that you are a worthwhile person and you have self-esteem. You count on people to treat you in a kind and caring way.

If you respect someone else, you are interested in them as a person. You honor and value them. You act in a kind and caring ways toward them. This kind of respect shows up in what you say and how you say it. If you respect someone you will speak in a kind and caring way. Your tone of voice and your behavior will have a nice quality when you are respectful.

Respect for property is how you treat things. It takes careful attention to deal with your own things as well as other people’s things in a thoughtful considerate way. It is treating other people’s property and public property as if they were your own.

‘Respect for all life’ is also very important. This means you respect Planet Earth. You care for the environment, and you are kind to all living things. You can show this kind of respect by not littering and not wasting Mother Nature’s resources, such as water.

Without respect there would be a lot more rudeness in the world. No one would care about anyone else. Respect makes our world more peaceful and it makes all of our relationships more friendly and more fun.

How Do We Demonstrate Respect?

You can practice and demonstrate respect every day. What you do comes back to you so follow this simple law of cause (what you do) and consequence (comes back to you). Think about how you want to be treated and treat others in the same way.

You can demonstrate respect when you see older people. If an older person is standing on the bus and you are sitting, a respectful thing to do is give them your seat. Older people deserve a little extra respect and appreciation. Because you are younger, you have more energy and more strength. It is important to be sensitive to the needs of your elders and always try to help them.

You can practice respect by speaking quietly and not interrupting when others are speaking. You can listen with respect by staying focused on the speaker. You can act with respect by noticing the feelings and needs of others.

You can also show respect by kindness towards animals and all of Earth’s creatures. Feed and care for your own pets and be kind to all living things.

Remember that you are a center of influence. Your words and deeds make a difference. What you say and do, and the way you say and do it can influence others. If you demonstrate respect to everyone and everything you become a positive model for other people. You will influence them in a positive way and your life will make a difference.

Journaling

Ask students to journal for a few minutes at the end of every day on some act of respect they participated in or saw demonstrated by others during the course of that day.

Ask me if I’m excited! I am!!!

I am finally having the opportunity to take years of professional experience, school and corporate consulting, coaching, and training and package it in ways that it can be shared with team leaders, supervisors and people in top leadership roles.

This week is a week full of corporate training. But please know that I have not abandoned ship! I will be back on board early next week.

Please join me then.

Yours Truly,

Trinidad