Diversity Makes Us Stronger

Last week, my school had our Winter Concert. The music was wonderful and seeing all of our students performing with confidence in a variety of musical genres and singing in parts made me incredibly proud. So much to be proud of - but there was something that really inspired me in addition to the music. So many of the students on the stage spoke little or no English when they came to my school, and yet they were on the stage with every other child - grinning, proud, singing, doing the motions, and being included. Their parents, who speak Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, Kinyarwandan, Karen, or Chinese, beamed as they saw their children on stage performing - fully a part of the school community.

Why does this story matter today? Today is the day to share this story so that it can impact someone who has never been fortunate enough to experience the power of diversity.

According to the National Park Service, The Statue of Liberty has been referred to as "The Immigrant's Statue" since the late 1800's. Emma Lazarus' famous poem, which is engraved onto the pedestal of Lady Liberty, rings out with the words

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

For me, these words have always underscored a commitment. They are an invitation. They are the theme of our country. At least, that is what I have been taught and I have believed. 

A newly arrived immigrant family on Ellis Island, gazing across the bay at the Statue of Liberty from National Park Service

The current administration's decisions regarding immigrants and sanctuary cities is reactionary and panders to the uninformed, the privileged, and the afraid. Diversity in our schools, and in our country, makes us stronger. Learning from the stories of others strengthens our own story and shows us how we can be a better version of ourselves. As educators, we see the power of learning each and every day in our classrooms and in our schools. We know that a community must have diverse ideas in order to thrive. The time is now to use that power to make sure that children from Syria, from the Congo, from Burma, from Afghanistan, have the same opportunities that young Irish or Italian children had 100 years ago.

A Case for Personalized Learning

Personalized Learning. It's quite a topic in education right now. But, personalized learning is not new - it has taken on a new life as our need for differentiation has grown. A colleague asked me to consider the challenges of the one-room school house and consider it as a model of personalized learning.

 Today's classrooms look very different than the one-room schoolhouse, but the challenge is similar - full classrooms of students at varying levels with one teacher trying to figure out how to push students toward mastery. Our teachers today have the additional challenge of standards, state testing, and school improvement measures. We also have an amazing opportunity to use digital tools in our classrooms and to use those tools as a way to reach the goal of truly personalized learning.

Personalized learning isn't just about digital tools. It is about knowing your students, knowing their data and the strengths or gaps in their learning, knowing effective standards-based instruction, and knowing how to build student ownership of their own learning. Education Elements, who are some of the foremost thinkers about personalized learning, define the core four elements of personalized learning as Targeted Instruction, Data Driven Decisions, Student Reflection and Ownership, and Integrated Digital Content. 

From Education Elements - Core Four Elements of Personalized Learning

With all of the work we have invested in using data to drive our instruction, it seems like everything points to the Core Four Elements of Personalized Learning as a logical step. Using data to drive your instruction ultimately leads to personalized learning - and the right digital content can ensure that students are engaged in effective, standards-based learning. 

Digital tools do not replace teacher actions - they should enhance the effective, standards-based instruction that is happening in classrooms. Classrooms might feel like the old one-room schoolhouse with the levels of necessary differentiation, but today's classroom should look much different. Today's personalized classroom reflects the availability of technology and information and is rooted in individualized goal setting and personalized growth. If we are truly committed to providing our students with a high-quality education that prepares our students for college and career, this level of personalized learning is the next step in our journey. Digital tools, in combination with data driven instruction, effective standards-based instruction, and students involved in setting their own goals and monitoring their own progress are changing the way our classrooms look and the way our children achieve. 

What Our Kids Need

When you think about the students in your class, how do you know them? Do you know them for the behaviors they show in your room or throughout the school? Do you know them for the gaps in their learning and what their data reflects? Do you know them for their lives and what they bring to school with them each and every day? Do you know them for who you think they are or do you really know each and every child in your class?

Really knowing your students means knowing their lives - their real lives - and bringing that understanding into your support and guidance for your students. It doesn't mean that you lower your expectations for them based on what you know about their lives. If anything, it means that you have consistently high expectations, but you also have to have compassion and understanding. 

This article, published on CNN, talks about children in Chicago learning to dodge bullets before they are five years old. According to the National Center for Child Poverty, 47% of American children are from low-income families and 66% of those children are African-American. The American Psychological Association  indicates that poverty has significant impacts on children in many ways, not the least of which is academic performance. 

From American Psychological Association

Educators must know and understand how they can best support children living in poverty without judgement or condemnation. Our children didn't ask to be born into poverty. Parents want what is best for their children. That leaves educators to ensure that our children have whatever they need to help them break the cycle of poverty - social emotional strategies and practice, high academic expectations, and a vision of themselves in the future where they are of value and valued. 

from Children's Defense Fund

Our kids need educators who are committed to giving them the skills they will need to break the cycle of poverty - reading, writing, and math skills that will help them be competitive, social emotional skills that will help them solve problems and cope with the challenges they face, and supports for parents and families struggling with addiction, insecure housing, unemployment or underemployment, and/or mental health issues. The field of education needs people with vision and a relentless commitment to doing whatever it takes to making the future better for our children. We need people with creativity, with compassion, with a commitment to high expectations and doing whatever it takes to help change our communities so that children do not have to grow up learning to dodge bullets before they learn how to read.

Goals for the New Year

It's time to go back to school and the calendar has turned to another year. As we return to school, it's time to take stock of what is working and what needs to be adjusted in order to move our students closer to proficiency.

How do you know where all of your students have made growth and where you measure up? It is time to review all of that data and develop an action plan for moving forward.

Having a system to track, review, and compare data is essential for any school. We use a system developed in Microsoft 365 to share our data, but any system of tracking and sharing data works, as long as it is consistently used and everyone agrees on the data points. 

Having data doesn't do any good if it isn't being used to design targeted instruction. Today's teachers must be able to must be data experts who use data to plan instruction that meets students where they are and moves them to the next level. 

Moving students to the next level can be extremely overwhelming when you have large numbers of students who are below level, so it is important to set short-term, as well as long-term, goals. Many new teachers get stuck here - wasting valuable time on lessons that don't move students closer to the goal. Your long-term, or year end, goals are similar to the concept of planning for college as soon as your child is born. You know that you have to begin the savings account, you have the conversation with you spouse, and you set a goal of how much you would like to have saved by the time your child is eighteen or ready to go to college (and trust me, it won't be enough). Short-term goals are similar to your plan to actually put the money in the account - whether you use a 529 or a savings account, you have a system to put away the money each month and then you progress monitor to see how close you are getting to your goal. It's actually the short-term goals that you can adjust and make changes to in order to get you closer to your long-term goal. So as important as the end of the year goal is, if you are not setting short-term goals that will get your students closer to the mark, and then reviewing each and every day to see how much progress they have made, you will find yourself short when it really comes time. 

So, it's time to measure up. How much progress have your students made to date? Where are your students in terms of the year-end goals? What teacher actions will you implement in order to move your students over the next 6-8 weeks? Here is an example of a tool for planning your mid-year data discussions and instructional planning.