Cupid Shuffle, Robots, Teamwork

To the right, to the right, to the right, to the right, 
to the left, to the left, to the left, to the left, 
now kick, now kick, now kick, now kick, 
now walk it by yourself . . ..”  

The music started jammin’; the dancers in their pastel tutus started groovin’; kids started clappin'.  No, this was not last month’s middle school dance, rather it was seventh-grade science class on Friday at 9:50 AM, rooms five and six.  The dancers involved, while directed by the seventh graders, were actually Lego Mindstorm robots.  The routines, expertly choreographed and programmed, were the culmination of a week’s worth or teamwork.  While programming is a valued skill that involves logical sequencing, problem solving, and some discreet knowledge about the language involved, the real value of last week’s “dance off” was in the work and lessons learned about collaboration and communication.  

About a week ago, I was touring the mother of a fifth-grade boy who was interested in how the middle school had changed in the short time that had passed since her daughter, a current ninth grader, first entered Stephens Hall.  We spent some time in my office talking about educational theory and then moved down the hall to see what was happening.  I love to give tours because it is a chance for me to show off what we do and who we are, something that is sometimes difficult to describe with words or numbers.  We entered Mr. McManus’s room at the end of the hall and found Meghan and Anna Kate standing in front of their seventh-grade classmates.  While the following is paraphrased, it is pretty close to what we heard:

Okay, everyone be quiet.  We've got to get rid of the chaos, so we decided to give everybody jobs.  If you don’t like your job, it doesn’t matter ‘cause you can switch.  We think Sydney should be leader.

As this was going on, Mr. McManus was sitting off to the side pretending to be disinterested.  The mom and I looked at each other, and I got a big smile on my face.  

Now I wasn’t in the classroom the previous day, but from what the girls told me, it was pretty ugly: people talking, no one listening, raised voices, frustration, nothing getting done -- sounds a little like Congress.  Mr. McManus, being a wise, experienced sage, let the situation play out. He trusted the process and didn’t jump in to fix things. This empowered the girls to take matters into their own hands and work it out.  Some girls became programmers, some costume designers, some DJ’s, some choreographers, and one a leader.  Some girls changed jobs as it became apparent that more work was needed in different areas.  They worked together.  They solved their own problems.

I spent a few minutes talking to Anna Kate and Meghan who had stood in front of their peers to attempt to make order out of chaos, and asked them what I thought was going to be a tough question:  “Why didn’t appoint yourselves leaders?”  They didn’t miss a beat and said that they chose Sydney because she is really good at being a leader.  They said that she listens well and can organize things.  Nice!  

The three other seventh-grade core groups also struggled through the process of how to get a large group to work together to reach a goal. Some were not particularly pleased with the outcome; however, if each groups' performance didn't come off perfectly, they all persevered and brought something worthwhile to the dance floor. So, as Cupid says, ". . . do your dance, do your dance."

Group Foresight and Action -- Mt. Fuji

What thirteen-year-old boy would voluntarily give up control and power to one of his classmates for the good of his group? I know three who did, as well as the one who accepted the others’ nomination and worked to govern the group judiciously.

Yesterday, I interviewed a group of seventh-grade boys who were asked to work together on a project that involved figuring out how long it would take to move Mr. Fuji.  Yes, it is an intriguing math problem, but for these boys it became a greater exercise in learning to work together.  Putting strong-willed, opinionated students together in a group is often a recipe for disaster.  Arguments, frustration, sarcasm, and hurt feelings are common outcomes.  Frequently the groups become so dysfunctional that one or two group members leave the group because they can’t control the outcome. 

This group of boys was different.  This group of boys recognized that they had a problem from the start.  They are all high achievers, willing to do the work of those who are less motivated to make the final outcome something that meets their own ambitions.  They are all willing to motivate others using leadership skills they possess in order to succeed.  Grouped as they were, they realized right away that they all were inclined to lead.  So, instead of fighting it out, undermining others, or giving up, they reached a pivotal decision.  They decided to give up control and choose one of the four to lead them.  What is amazing is that the leader didn’t simply emerge or usurp the power -- but rather he was unanimously selected by the others.  Truthfully, the leader probably could have been any of them -- what is significant is the foresight and collaboration that they exercised.

Sublimating one’s own will and voice for the benefit of achieving something worthwhile does not happen by chance.  I believe that these boys were able to foresee and remedy the potential problem because they have been asked to work together in groups with others since they were little kids.  Our students work together every day; it is an expectation.  I’m pleased that my school and faculty recognize that the skills needed to be successful and happy are just as important, if not more important, than content that usually reigns king.  I’m not sure how long it takes to move Mr. Fuji, but I do know that these boys have developed skills that are more important than moving a mountain.

Lessons from Big Bald

About a month ago our Middle School PE teacher, Brian Rannie, asked me to go on a trail run with him.  I had been upping my mileage a little and figured that I could complete the 13-mile run, although I was worried about slowing him down a bit.  However, our colleague, Andy Lammers committed, and it is hard for me to resist opportunities to run with friends. I dragged along my neighbor who had just completed a half marathon the weekend before, and we set off some thirty miles north of Asheville to the Appalachian Trail, which serves as the border between North Carolina and Tennessee for a stretch.

It was the proverbial clear, cold morning -- well below freezing as we started climbing up into the mountains.  The leaves were already down, and the trail was covered with a fluffy mess that made footing tenuous.  Our goal was an out and back to Big Bald, a climb of around 2000 feet over six and a half miles.  We all worked hard on the way up and about a mile from the summit, I stopped everyone and said I thought I’d stop there and wait for them to come back down.  I knew I could easily make it to the top, but I was concerned about the return trip as I hadn’t run 13 miles in many years.  My friends offered me words of encouragement without degrading my manhood, so I followed them up.  The view was certainly worth it, and we took fifteen minutes or so to celebrate being on top of the world.  

The descent was much worse for me than the climb as it was fast and the footing was slippery and obscured.  The last two miles I had to walk the steepest downhills as my legs were shaky enough to make a fall almost certain. Truthfully, during the last half mile all I wanted to do was lie down on those fluffy leaves beside the trail.  When I got to the end, I felt bad enough to pass the car keys over to Andy as driving seemed like a real push.  An hour later, I soaked in the bathtub, feeling something between pride and relief that I had finished.

As I look back on that day, I think about how difficult it was, but I also think about how wonderful it was and is to do things that are a real challenge.  It is pretty easy to slide through a life filled with the routine of our days -- the same repetitive tasks that do little to stretch us and force us to grow.  I am reminded that I need to continue to seek challenges so that I will be equipped to handle what fate and others put in my path.  

I am also reminded that school should not just be about kids passing through a schedule of routine classes each day.  We must create challenges for them -- real challenges that force them to access strengths that are hidden behind fear or are simply untapped.  Young people have amazing resiliency, and we need not be afraid to ask them to walk out on a limb, even if the path forward may require a jump of some sort.  We want our students to have the confidence to attempt great things; however, the path to greatness is not for the meek.

The second part of this story is that I had others with me to encourage me along the way.  Sure, I was the one took every last one of those thousands of steps down that mountain, but I’m pretty sure I never would have gotten to the top without my friends there to support me.  This is the other thing that we must do for our students:  provide them a supportive environment, full of friends and teachers who encourage when attempts into the unknown are made.   The knowledge that others believe in our strengths, even when we don’t, is sometimes all we need to get to the top.

Understanding Boy World

Between raking a couple of million leaves, spatchcocking and roasting a turkey, and running until my plantar fasciitis has left me hobbling, I have been plowing through Rosalind Wiseman’s newest book, Masterminds and Wingmen, which focuses on helping adults to understand teenage boys.  Through her research and interviews with hundreds of boys, Wiseman gives us (you should read this book) a portrait of boys and a glimpse into their psyche, motivation, and daily struggles.  Although I’m only half way done with the book, I’m beginning to question how any of us guys have managed to reach adulthood.

I’ll give Wiseman credit; she wrote this book from a place of love for boys not because she wants to change or slam them.  As a man, it is pretty tough reading the book and thinking about all the stupid and dangerous things that I did as a boy, and, from reading the anecdotes of boys growing up now, that most boys do today.  Wiseman uncovers the reasons why boys sneak out at night, why they turn silent or lie when questioned, and why their anger can dominate them.  However, she doesn’t stop there.  She gives parenting advice on all these topics and more -- even the really tough ones involving social media, video games, sex, and porn.

Masterminds and Wingmen should really be used as a resource, not just for information.  When you question what you are doing in reaction to something your son has done, it would be great to go back and read a specific chapter in the book to get some perspective.  You may not follow Wiseman’s advice to the letter, but at least you will have considered an alternative, which is bound to help you make a better decision.  

The Big Problem - Real Life Requires Real Math

Solving real problems is messy.  Sometimes, we don’t even know what problem we are trying to solve, and it doesn’t become obvious until some investigation and discovery takes place.  We must decide what information is needed and attempt to get it, although it isn’t always available.  Sometimes there are so many variables that they distract or even confuse us from defining a course to follow.  And, frequently there may not be one absolute solution.  The solution that we reach may have corollaries or disclaimers, or it may simply be a best guess given all of our efforts.  I hope this is starting to sound like real life because it doesn’t make a lot of sense to devote a huge chunk of time in school to learning math that is not useful in real life.  And, if our students don’t get opportunities to use math in real life situations, then they will continue to see it as a boring, inert process that must be slogged through just to get to the next math course; or, even worse, as the way to a better score on the SAT.  Math is so much more than a way to get into college -- it is a way to view the world, and it gives us the ability to understand, seek, and find solutions to the world around us.

This week, we started working on one of what we call our Big Problems --  a real problem.  I told the students that I had been thinking about replacing the long, rectangular tables in our lunch room with circular tables.  Because our students are primed from years of practice as problem solvers, it took them all of ten minutes to come up with the following questions and comments in some small group discussions.  Although as a school administrator, I have thought of changing out the tables for a long time, I hadn’t considered several of their ideas as variables:

• Are round tables more ergonomical?  Forearms naturally form triangles when on the table.
• How big can a round table be to hold a conversation with someone across the table in our lunchroom?
• Does looking at someone when talking to them help conversation and relationships?
• Would there be more space to move between the tables?  
• What happens to aisle space?  Will it open the flow or restrict it?
• How would moving to round tables affect cleaning? How big can it be and still be easily cleaned?
• Storage? (We move our tables every day to clean the floor.)
• Will round tables hurt or help inclusivity?
• Will they fit in the lunchroom?
• What will be the cost?
• Will the cost be worth the benefit (if any)?
• Unintended consequences?
• Other stakeholders (the LS students who use the lunchroom also).

What kind of math tools will we need to pursue this problem?  Some things are obvious like measuring, performing simple arithmetic calculations, working with geometric shapes, and spatial reasoning.  However, we may look at hearing as a function of distance from speaker (this is an algebra class after all).  Or the number of seats available as a function of the circumference of a table.  We are going to have to figure out some way to apply a dollar amount to something that is not easily counted (building relationships) and this will definitely involve some statistical analysis.  We are going to have to do some data collection, analysis, and interpretation.  More statistics. Finally, we are going to have to reach beyond our collective knowledge base to get information and possibly even help.  

So, how does this assignment hold up to the teaching of skills that have become a fundamental element of our middle school:  collaboration, problem solving, communication  creativity, perseverance, grit.  We can check all of these off.

I told the students that if we decide that replacing the tables would be a good idea that we would present our findings to our Chief Financial Officer and other stakeholders.  We are not sure if the school will take our advice; this is the real world after all, and there are all sorts of other claims on school dollars than lunch room tables.  But, regardless of the outcome, the process of working through this problem will give the students and teachers some practice with the utility and function of math.   

Building Relationships

Seventeen years ago, I was sitting in a sterile, public school administrator’s office being interviewed for a teaching position.  When asked about my best qualities as a teacher, the first thing out of my mouth was my ability to form positive relationships with my students.  I explained how I listened to students’ problems, took them to perform community service work on my own time, and went to important events in their lives outside of school.  I professed that because I worked to develop relationships with my students, they would behave better in class, work harder, and gain self-confidence.  Almost immediately I realized that the principal interviewing me didn’t hold the same beliefs.  She quickly directed the conversation back to curriculum and testing, and I left the office knowing that I didn’t get the job -- and feeling somewhat grateful that I wouldn’t be working for this person.

I am fortunate to find myself working in a school that puts a premium on relationships, and we have structured our middle school to reflect this belief.  We offer students and faculty opportunities to connect with each other throughout the daily schedule and the calendar year.

• Group work -- I can honestly say that not a day that goes by that a student does not have the opportunity to work with another student or group of students.  Learning to work together is our culture.

• Advisory -- our advisories are single gender and multigrade.  Advisories are small, six to eight students, and led by a faculty member of the same gender.  We meet first thing each morning for fifteen minutes and have casual chats, foster important discussions, or play games.  
• Breaks -- our students have two breaks during the day, one during the morning and one after lunch.  Students can choose to play or talk together.  Students are discouraged from doing academic work at this time.
• Advisory intramurals -- each day during morning break, two advisories compete against each other in fun games like handball, beach volleyball, and pinball.  It has become so popular that half of the school comes down to watch the games and cheer.
• Exploratory -- twice in our six-day cycle, our students attend a class called "Exploratory." Faculty members choose a pursuit that they enjoy such as photography, board games, knitting, Pinterest, Lego robotics, theater games, and coding; and students sign up for the class.  Exploratory classes change three times each year.  Students (and faculty) of different grades and genders spend time together in pursuit of mutual interest.
• Dances and activities -- we hold three dances per year for our middle-school students.  Nearly every student attends and they are highly anticipated.  There are also three after-school social activities per school year like bowling or roller skating.
• Buddies -- all of our middle-school students are buddies with lower-school students.  Buddies get together six to ten times per year to participate in fun activities centered on the younger of the buddy pair.
• Extracurricular activities -- In middle school all of our students are encouraged to participate in athletics or our musical theater production.  Nearly all of our students take advantage of these opportunities to play, compete, and perform together outside of the regular school day.
• Overnights -- All of our students participate in two separate overnight trips during the school year where an emphasis is placed on developing teamwork among the students and faculty in the grade.

As a faculty, we also talk about ways to continually develop relationships with students.  None of these require teachers to be charismatic "pied pipers;" they are simply good practice in establishing and growing relationships:

• ask questions and listen
• be genuine
• go to extracurricular activities and talk to students about them
• smile
• be patient and persistent in your attempts to connect
• be observant of students’ changes in mood and ask them about it
• share your own passions
• tell interesting stories from your past

Being a part of something, belonging to a community, is especially important during the middle-school years when adolescents and preteens start pushing away from family and trying to decide who they want to be.  It is sometimes a confusing time in a child’s life and a time of struggle with self-confidence.  We know that connecting with others helps middle-school students to find their own way and be happier, which is why we put so much effort into building our relationships with each other.

Google Sees Little Value in Test Scores and GPA

It must be reassuring to the folks who believe that school shouldn’t prepare students for the workplace to read the following written by Max Niesen from Business Insider:

In an interview with The New York Times' Adam Bryant, Google's Senior Vice President of People Operations Laszlo Bock explains that some of the biggest stalwarts of the hiring and recruiting world, the interview, GPA, and test scores, aren't nearly as important as people think.

Google doesn't even ask for GPA or test scores from candidates anymore, unless someone's a year or two out of school, because they don't correlate at all with success at the company. Even for new grads, the correlation is slight, the company has found.

Bock has an excellent explanation about why those metrics don't mean much.

" Academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment," he says.

While in school, people are trained to give specific answers, "it's much  more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer," Bock says. "You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer."

When I started teaching in the early 1990s, I had already worked for a bank, done some oil and gas properties management, and run different divisions of an automobile dealership.  My first teaching job at Robert E. Lee High School in San Antonio was a shock on many levels, but the biggest head-spinner was that it became clear to me that school had little to do with other workplaces or real life.  Some teachers were unmotivated and would have been fired in a week if school were anything like the working world.  I’ll never forget one seasoned teacher asking me why I worked so hard.  There was little focus on the customers, e.g. , the parents who paid our wages through taxes and the students who were the passive recipients of knowledge that was of little use in their lives.  A lot of time and energy was spent in managing the students’ days, making sure that everyone was accounted for and trying to limit the opportunities for students to engage in illicit or unsupervised activities.  Even amidst this mind-deadening, controlled world, there were many dedicated faculty and students who struggled to teach and learn in a system that really wasn’t conducive to helping students learn how to be successful in their lives outside of school.

The students who were successful at Robert E. Lee High School and most other high schools around the country, the students who learned how to “do school” and be successful in what Bock calls an “artificial environment,” went on to ply their school skills at college.  Then they faced what I and nearly everyone I knew faced when I graduated from college:  they faced a world of work that was quite different from high school and college.  While a college diploma may have given them a ticket into the workforce, it did little to prepare them for what they would be doing.

The most frustrating thing to me is that we know how to help students learn to be succesful outside of school.  We know how to teach students to examine and solve open-ended problems; we know how to instill grit in our students to give them long term perseverance; we know how to help students develop character strengths; we know how to create environments and methods that hone students’ communicative and collaborative skills; we know how to help internal motivation flourish within students; we know that we should limit curriculum to what is truly “lifeworthy.”  If you don’t believe me, pay attention to the experts who have spent the better part of their lives researching and reporting on these topics:  Check out Dan Meyer’s work in implementing problem solving, look at Angela Duckworth’s work on grit, read Martin Seligman on developing character, don’t forget Daniel Pink’s and Alfie Kohn’s books on motivation; listen to what Dave Perkins has to say about lifeworthy skills.

There are many things standing in the way of making school more relevant to life, but the primary obstacle is the collective mindset of institutions, parents, teachers, administrators, and students that we all think we know what school looks like.  In our minds, even though many of us know better, school should look like what it looked like last year, or ten years ago, or fifty years ago simply because that is school.  Unfortunately, the school that we are comfortable with, the school of our memory, grows in irrelevance as the rest of the world speeds toward the future while we remain firmly planted in the past.

Modeling: Another MOOC Course

I’ve been doing a little modeling on the side the last few weeks.  No photo shoots for Esquire or GQ, but modeling -- as in creating ways to represent the world by using math or graphics to gain understanding and find solutions to problems.  I enrolled in my second MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) through Coursera a couple of weeks ago and have gone through the first three weeks of Dr. Scott E. Page’s “Model Thinking” class at the University of Michigan.  It already has me thinking that modeling, along with probability and statistics, should be required at all schools.

If you have been listening to the news lately, you are probably aware of the growing demonstrations in Sao Paulo, where Brazilians are protesting against high taxes and low living standards.  Dr. Page’s lecture that I watched yesterday demonstated a simple model that explains how difficult it is to predict these huge public demonstrations that have occurred around the world the last three years.  It all has to do with thresholds and peer effects.  I’ll let him explain it in this six-minute video:

This simple model has some pretty big implications for seventh-graders.  We know that as children grow to be teens that most look to peers for cues on what they should wear, how they should act, what music to listen to, the type of social media to use, etc.  What is a particular thirteen-year-old's threshold for "trying on a new hat" and what if that new hat is not something harmless, but something that can have lasting ramifications.  I plan to show this video to my advisory next year in hopes that  understanding thresholds and the peer effect may give my boys enough knowledge to display courage and confidence in situations that could be harmful or dangerous.  

Free Your Mind, Share a Run

They say that if you sleep on a problem that you will wake up with a solution.   I solve problems when I run.  Creativity happens because I am unencumbered by linear thought.  My mind floats and roams on a rocking sea, held afloat by the the constant rhythm of my feet, my breath, and my arms.  When running, I have true attention deficit, and my mind leaps and frolics in places that it normally doesn’t venture.  Because of this, I rarely run with others.  The conversation keeps my mind too focused to float.  However, on the last day of the faculty workweek, Andy Lammers and I hit a small portion of the Mountains to Sea Trail together, and something unusual happened -- at least for me.

After five minutes of panting up the Stuyvesant Road hill, we both fell into a comfortable rhythm of breath and legs.  The stressors of our work week started dripping off of us like the sweat that rolled down our backs.  After a few minutes, we began free associating childhood memories that were so close in spirit and emotion that our childhoods could have occurred in the same time and place instead of being separated by fifteen years and several thousand miles.  We talked about the risks that we took as boys:  throwing mudclods at our neighborhood friends, reading books soaked in the heroics of war, building forts, and pretty much being clueless to the world outside our neighborhoods.  Our memories fed off of each other, bouncing around from one thread to another.  It struck me much later that on this run, our minds worked together to do the same thing that happens to me when I run alone.  That is cool.  

Although I’ve known Andy for many years, that run brought me closer to him than any time we have spent together socially or professionally.  Long term memories have their neural grounding in deep emotion.  I’ll remember this run with Andy, and maybe in the future I’ll seek out running partners rather than shunning them.