Ask Your Students - Why Do You Read?

I had two ah-ha moments this morning. One about teaching reading and the other about blogging.

I just spent two days watching some full day kindergarten programs. Both programs were pretty different in terms of their curricular programming and instructional delivery, but both had their kids reading at high levels. I saw a lot and took many notes. As I was rereading my notes and reflecting on what I saw, I took a break to catch up on some of the blogs that I follow. On Stephanie Sandifer's blog Change Agency, she wrote a post titled Love of Reading… and my fear…. In her post, she was actually reflecting on another blog post by Angela Maiers. In her post, Angela describes a scenario of watching her son “get through” his weekly reading assignment, after which he tells her:

“Mom, I hate reading. I did not want to tell you that, ’cause I know that it’s your job and reading is a big deal to you, but I really really hate it. I dream of the day when I will never have to do reading again. If I was on a dessert island, I would rather die of starvation, than read a book. And, if you think I am weird or something, you gotta know, all my friends feel exactly the same way.”

Stephanie reflected on this quote and wrote:

My beautiful 15 month old twins are voracious “readers” right now. They LOVE their books and will spend a great deal of time every day “reading” as many of their books as they can. Not only do they love to crawl into my lap with a book and demand that I read it to them, they also sit by themselves, flipping pages, and babbling as they stop on each page. They point to the pictures and tell me the story in their own words. Of course they aren’t reading the words on the page — but they get the concept and most importantly, they LOVE the concept of reading a book.

My biggest fear is that someday, somewhere, some teacher will destroy their love of reading by giving them “reading assignments” that make reading feel more like a chore rather than a pleasurable activity.

I have never met Stephanie or Angela. Neither of them know who I am or that I am currently trying to digest my observations of two full day kindergarten programs. Nevertheless, their reflections based on their own experiences help me to crystallize my first ah-ha on what I had experienced.

Although both programs we visited had their students reading at high levels, I am not sure that the levels of intrinsic interest to read were the same. I think if you asked the students from both classes "Why do you read?", the answers would be different. How would you want your students to respond to that question? Would you want your students to say "to discover new things" or "because Mrs. So-and-so thinks it is important". The boy in this picture is my son Evan at age 4. He already loves reading. I would be devastated if he came home and told me what Angela's boy told her.

In education, because of the length of time it takes to achieve our final product (13 years) and student motivation being an integral part of achieving a quality result, the processes we employ to achieve each step along the way are critical to achieving our long term goals. I wrote a post titled Long Road Trips & Education: An Analogy on my other blog "blogkhead" back in August where I take this issue into more depth.

The other ah-ha about blogging... I'll leave for you to "infer" from what I've already written.

..Cross posted at kinderblogn.

Leadership vs. Coercion and Bribery

"… you cannot lead strangers, you can only coerce or bribe them."

Karl Fisch posted a blog entry on this pondersome quote. I spent a great deal of my weekend thinking about this quote. After some research, I discovered that it was one of my favorite authors who penned it – Orson Scott Card in Ender in Exile.

In eleven words, its sums up everything that is wrong in education, from the methods that we take to motivate of our students to the methods politicians take to motivate us to reform. I believe Card’s point is not to encourage coercion or bribery. The quote implies that coercion and bribery are not leadership. The intent is to focus us on being more familiar with those we are trying to lead.

We do not have to have a personal relationship in order for us not to be considered strangers. To be effective as a leader we must demonstrate that we are familiar with the conditions that those we lead face, and we must make our thoughts and ideas familiar to those we lead. It is not people or their personal relationships that lead revolutions, it is their ideas that do.

Another quote comes to mind. “The pen is mightier than the sword.” The intrinsic value of an idea is mightier than the extrinsic value of reward or punishment. I have come to believe that coercion and bribery, which are the true nature of external accountability measures, cannot and will not lead to lasting change for this reason.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, then what is the communication technology that we possess today (blogs, wikis, etc.) mightier than?

Long Road Trips & Education: An Analogy

This summer my wife, my 4 kids and I traveled from Colorado to Virginia to help my mother-in-law move. Several days before the trip I asked (my youngest - age 4) if he was excited about riding in a car for 3 days straight. His response was genuine and full of excitement, enthusiasm and energy. My older 2 children (ages 11 and 9) responded much differently. They told him that it wasn't something to look forward to, because it was going to be boring and there would be nothing to do.

That got me thinking about how a student getting ready to start kindergarten and an older student reply to being asked if they are excited about the upcoming school year. I think their responses are very much the same. They start school in kindergarten full of wonder, excitement and energy. And they lose that excitement and enthusiasm for learning along the way.

Then, I started thinking about why my oldest children felt the way they do about long road trips. In reflection, our previous road trips had always been about getting to our destination in as little time as possible. "Stop now? We still have half a tank. We'll be cutting our miles per hour average if we have to stop now. Didn't you pee at the last stop? Yep, that looked interesting, but we don't have time to stop and look at it. We have to get to where we are going."

In essence, our road trips had always been about the product to the detriment of the process.

The focus on high stakes testing and other mandates in education cause us to focus more on arbitrary and unauthentic products to the detriment of the process. Our students and teachers lose their enthusiasm for learning and teaching (the process).

Albert Einstein had a sign hanging in his office that read, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." That sign was used to remind one of the world's greatest mathematicians that qualitative measures are just as important and sometimes more important than quantitative measures.

I think the climate of accountability has brought about an imbalance in qualitative and quantitative measures. Qualitative measures are more expensive and less objective. So, quantitative measures have become the yardstick of choice for accountability. But, in education where the process (as in the learning process, 21st century skills, life long learners and all that) is our product, qualitative measures of the process are just as important if not more important than the quantitative measures of the product.

Also, while I can focus on the destination to provide the necessary motivation to push me through my long road trip, my children have a much harder time staying motivated by a concept that involves delayed gratification.

Our elementary age students can't look ahead to 2017-2021 when they graduate to keep them motivated. They need to enjoy the process along the way to keep them motivated until they can see the end in sight.

We will never reach our product of capable, life long learners, if our processes turn our students off to learning. We must stay focused on processes that cultivate our true visions of 21 century learners. If we do, I strongly suspect our student achievement scores will go up as a byproduct. And, when they do it will be in spite of the high stakes tests and accountability not for or because of them.

We must hold ourselves accountable to our children and the future, before we answer to federal mandates. Only then can we achieve excellence.

On our trip back to Colorado, we decided that we would focus on enjoying the ride and not on getting to our destination as soon as we could. We stopped for half a day at Monticello, for 2 hours at the Brown vs. Board of Education historical site in Topeka, KS, and at a water park in Denver on our way. My kids said that it was the best trip we had ever been on and that they couldn't wait to go on another 3 (or more) day road trip.

I want our students to say that they enjoyed what they learned and that they can't wait to learn something else.