DaveShearon

Teacher-Developed Text Books

Great post over at edspresso on textbooks and the possible combination of teacher smarts and technology .  I've wondered about a wikipedia-style approach --wait! there is such a tool on the net.  Where have I seen it?  If I find it or someone sends it to me, I'll update this post.  Meanwhile, though I push reading, I suspect the poor writing, uninteresting approach, and shallowness of many texts help turn students off to real books, magazines, newspapers, etc.  For more on this topic, see Computer Science Teacher, and here.

FISH!

Just finished FISH! by  Stephen C. Lunding, Harry Paul, and John Christensen (see sidebar).  One of my staff had read it and wanted our office to work with it.  Good book.  Written as a story and presented in a simple manner, but the principles fit with the findings of the Positive Organizational Studies folks at Michigan.  Those principles are:

*Choose your attitude.

*Play.

*Make their day.

*Be present.

Not bad.  Although it may sound simplistic, a conscious focus on positives, improvement, enjoyment, and high-quality connections with co-workers and customers can not only make work more enjoyable AND more productive, it can actually make folks healthier.  For a more scholarly and more in depth look at some of the same issues, see Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High Quality Connections at Work by Jane Dutton

Carnival Time

The current Carnival of Education is up here, and, if you'd like to submit a post to the next one, check this out.

Is help getting into law school a good thing?

This post at The Volokh Conspiracy deals with current discussions within the American Bar Association about actions law schools should or should not be taking to assist minority applicants in obtaining admission.  Of course, I understand that the idea is that a law degree and, ultimately a license (another issue, as that article notes) can (but do not necessarily) open doors to highly remunerative jobs.  But, although entering law students look much like other college graduates, by the end of the first year, about 30% are depressed.  By the end of law school, it's 40%.  For practicing attorneys, depression rates seem to stay at 2-4 times the general norm.  Further, during the law school, the top students, especially, tend to go from intrinsic motivations ("I want to do good") to extrinsic reasons for practicing ("I want to get the goods.")  This is not a good thing for their future happiness.

Larry Krieger of Florida State School of Law and Ken Sheldon, Psychology, Missouri, are carrying forward a research program in this area.  This article by Larry Krieger gives some suggestions for law students based on their work.

Positive Psychology at Culver Academy

One of my MAPP classmates, John Yeager, is on faculty at Culver Academy, a co-ed boarding school in Culver, Indiana.  On June 12-14, John, Sherri Fisher (another classmate), and I put on a 3-day seminar entitled "Broadening and Building Positive Emotion at Culver" for 21 Culver faculty and a guest  from Exeter.  The three of us were in a small cohort throughout MAPP that was the "education cohort."  (As the only lawyer, I had to do my thinking about lawyers and positive psychology more on my on -- but there's some interesting progress there, also.)

It was interesting for me to learn about boarding schools, especially since Sherri and I got to visit with the guest from Exeter a good bit.  And, there's a Lady Vols connection to Culver!  (If you follow that link, notice how a public school system lost that student!)

Culver is making a substantial investment in positive psychology, first with John's particpation in MAPP and now with this seminar and another scheduled for August.  The faculty and counselors in this session were engaged and asked wonderful questions through all three days -- pretty good for folks that had just finished a demanding year and a week of faculty meetings!  Culver did the right thing and compensated them for the additional time, and it was clear that meant a lot to them.  And it speaks to the administration's support for this effort.

We tried to give the folks a broad introduction to positive psychology.  After all, so much of it applies to education!  Some topics that got a lot of reaction in the presentations the participants made on the last day included:

Active Constructive Responding -- how to build (or hurt!) relationships when someone shares good news

Appreciative Inquiry/Intelligence -- my presentation on this was aided by a participant's report on her use of AI with the girls in her dorm

Personal Theories of Intelligence -- how students' theories of intelligence (entity vs. incremental) affect willingness to undertake learning challenges, reactions to difficulty, etc., and how forms of praise can shape these theories

Character Strengths -- this is right down John's alley and he's been doing work in this area with students already.  All participants identified their VIA strengths prior to the sessions.

Hope/Optimism --  CR Snyder's work on hope and both dispositional (Carver and Scheier) and attributional style (Seligman) approaches to optimism.  Our cohort worked extensively in this area during the year due to the significant connections to schools, teaching and learning, and student achievement.

Sherri's a great photographer and we ended the session with a slide show of photos she'd made around campus and during the session.  It was a terrific experience and I'm looking forward to a return trip and reports on applications next year!

Most Effective Biology Instruction

North Carolina has done a study I had hoped Tennessee would do.

North Carolina state testing results were used in regression and residual analyses of student achievement. This analysis allowed for identification of the “most effective” and “least effective” biology teachers in Wake County Public Schools (WCPSS). The study found that the “most effective” biology teachers were focused on the delivery of biology instruction; resisted distractions from their classroom efforts; maximized student use of class time; studied and planned with other teachers using the North Carolina Biology Standard Course of Study; focused all student time on the Standard Course of Study goals; carefully planned teacher controlled student activities; and used data to guide their instructional practice.

This research study developed a value-added instructional improvement analysis model.

Now, how's the best way to help teachers adopt these practices?

A.  Hire a tough, disciplined Superintendent and CIO who'll demand that teachers focus on these principles?

B.  Teacher-Led Instructional Improvement?

I'm voting for B, and I submit Bellevue Schools as evidence supporting my choice.  What's more, I was talking about Bellevue when I was on the Board.  Mike Riley started lesson study in Bellevue the year before we began it here.  He stuck with it.  We hired a superintendent who dumped it.  Which looks like the better choice now?   The <funny> thing is, I asked our search consultant back in 2000 about Mike Riley.  His response?  "He spends too much time out in the schools."  Really.  Of course, that's the same search consultant who told us that top down leaders were no longer candidates for major school systems.  Really.  I couldn't make this stuff up.