I am hopelessly addicted to celebrity gossip. Whenever I get stressed out or can’t think clearly, I head over to Hollywood to see what’s going on. It calms my nerves, to know how much more ridiculous other people’s lives are than my own.  So you can imagine how surprised, when I found out Heidi Montag, a reality television “star” (star should probably be put in double quotes), moved to Costa Rica the same day I did! This very notion sent my head spinning. Could it be that there has been some kind of weird reversal of the Universe? Is Hollywood now following me as hotly as I was following them?

photo credit tabloidy.com

I have an idea percolating in my head. It’s not fully formed, but I’m so excited about it that I want to see what everyone thinks about it and what you can contribute to forming it into reality. This idea came to me in quite the same way that most ideas come…in a strange and obscure manner.

In this particular case, we happened to be lost in the middle of the countryside looking for the local farmers market. Part of the reason we were lost was because we were listening to an interesting NPR story about a pro-bono group that comes together once a month, and solves cold case crimes. The group, called the Vidocq Society, and is named after Eugene François Vidocq, an 18^th-century criminal-turned crime fighter. The society credits its success to its ability to look at a case from a variety of angles. Members come from a diverse set of backgrounds. Sitting next to a blood splatter expert might be a psychic and next to him might be an anthropologist.  Journalist Michael Capuzzo says the group is like “CSI to the 10^th power but real.”

So I got to thinking, what if we formed a Vidocq like society for issues revolving around the topic of education? (Clearly, we’d need to come up with some cool and meaningful name). It seems to me that there are a variety of forums out there that are talking about issues in education, but few are really doing anything.  This new group would be different in that there would be actual concrete solution at the end.  Here is how I envision it working:

- Collect members from diverse fields

- Solicit issues and presentation of facts from school districts, teachers, DOE, and administrators

- Choose an issue

- Members discuss the issue on some kind of live forum

- Deliver two or three resolutions to the “client”

So, who’s in? Post comments about how you could contribute?  Send me an email katie (at) theteachinggame.com.

Every Friday, for 8 years, I had to take a spelling test.  I know this isn’t that much of a tragedy, because I think this is pretty much the case for every kid in the United States.  I’m not sure how other kids studied for Spelling tests, but it was always the same for me.  My dad would quiz me in the car on the way to school, on the way home, on the way to soccer, swimming, ice skating, nature club, girl scouts etc.  It really is a miracle that he never crashed the mini van while testing me.
My dad, who is a really smart guy, would try and explain why words were spelled the way they were spelled.  He would go into stories about each word’s Latin and Greek roots.  The longer the story the better; because eventually we would get to where we were going and I would never have to spell the word
I remember a particular word very well….“linoleum”.  First off, why on earth would anyone need to know how to spell “linoleum”?  I figured that if I ever needed flooring and I couldn’t speak and had to write it down, I’d just write t-i-l-e or w-o-o-d.  Never mind my logic, I had to learn how to spell it. In this case, my dad proceeded to say linoleum really slowly to help me sound it out.  Have you ever watched someone sound the world linoleum slowly?  It’s not pretty.  First the backside of the tongue with all its purple veins and gleeking saliva shows.  Then there’s the puckering of the lips to make the “no” sound.  My poor dad, if he had known that I’d missed out on first grade Phonics, then he wouldn’t have bothered with the sounding out.
When Friday came along, all I could think of was how gross in every way the word linoleum was and proceeded to spell it incorrectly.

Essentially, from the time I was about three months old, I was on a class roster.  And from the time I was able to walk, I’ve been consciously trying to get off that roster.  As luck would have it, I had a partner in crime.  A girl named Sarah.  She was one of those kids whose mom would French braid her hair and put bows in it.  I mean don’t get me wrong, I was a cute kid, but more in that hair in knots, pants on crooked kind of way.  Nevertheless, we made a good team.
During outdoor playtime, we’d scope out escape routes. We stored detailed, crayon drawn, miniature maps in the toes of our shoes.  Occasionally we’d practice jumping the 3-foot fences that enclosed the playground.  We had to make sure that it wasn’t a day that Sarah got dressed in overalls as she had a tendency to get stuck.  I’ve had many interpretations of this behaviors, my therapist of course suggested it had to do with wanting to get attention and wanting to be close to my parents.  The most interesting guess happened during one of those pseudo intellectual times in college. This guy suggested it was my Jewish heritage that was causing me to always want to runaway and hide.
Now this running away thing wasn’t a passing fancy.  Finally, after about 10 years of attempts, Sarah and I actually pulled it off.  One summer we were enrolled in a Dutch National Team soccer camp hosted by the local high school.  I think it was called “Winning Mood.”  After so many years of misfires, I was surprised at how easy it turned out to be. Apparently what our previous plans had been missing, was a good lie. Basically, we just told the coaches we had to go home early.  That’s it.  Not fully understanding English or the litigious nature of the United States, they let us go.  We felt as if we had won all the events at the Olympic Games.  Freedom was ours! We road our bikes to the local park and contemplated the gravity of it all.  For the first time in our lives, we were calling the shots.  We were on our own roster!

I think it’s important to tell stories of my own educational experience. What happened to me in school informs to a large degree how I view education and the profession of teaching. This week, I am in the midst of exploring my new home, Costa Rica, so storytelling is a lot easier than deep thinking. I hope you enjoy!

Let’s see, school starts at 8:00am, so I must have been ready for tutoring by 7:15am.  Which means I was out of the house by 6:30am.  I remember the drill very well.  Count to 100 forward and then backward.  1…2…3…I went through the numbers as I followed my teacher around the teacher’s lounge. She always started the session by dumping out yesterday’s stale coffee and starting a new pot.  The lounge was steamy and swirled with the smell of years of reheated lunches.  Come to think of it was actually a lot like standing inside of a dirty microwave. “…30…31…32…” it was a Catholic school…so of course Jesus was hanging over the door. “…56…57…” It would go on, me following her around the lounge, through the halls, into the empty classroom. “…77…72…73”.  If I made a mistake I had to start over again.  “1…2…3…” I don’t remember feeling frustrated that I never did get to 100 or wondering why my teacher didn’t try a more creative approach to helping me learn my numbers.  It was so fun…especially the teacher’s lounge. “22…23…24…” The only time during school that we got to go in there was if someone fell at recess and needed an ice pack.  Walking down the halls, a normally mundane activity, felt more like a companion adventure down the Amazon. “89…90…91…” Without any of my other classmates in their seats, the classroom transformed from a torture chamber to our secret tree house hideout. It never really occurred to me that I had a learning disability. All I remember is feeling special…that I got to spend a half hour alone with my teacher.

photo by: Sherman Tan

What would school become if teachers stopped forcing students to learn by requiring attendance? A student who acted up or was sleeping during class would simply be asked to leave come back when they felt like they wanted to attend. There wouldn’t be any malice in the teacher’s tone. Just the simple idea that, oh…maybe you don’t want to be here right now. Would the students left in class want to be there and be fully engaged?

I was lucky enough to work in a school (9-12) where I could experiment with this. Basically, I told the students at the beginning of the year that if they didn’t feel like they could be fully present for the class, they didn’t have to (and shouldn’t) come. They did, however, have to check in with me at the beginning of class and schedule a time to talk to the councilor or me about why they weren’t in class. The surprising thing is that in two years I only had five students use this option.  Discipline was never a problem in my class. I’d like to think that students decided to come to my class because they really liked it and found the content relevant and engaging. But I wonder if it had more to do with the fact that no one was forcing them to be there.  It was truly their choice. Other than missing the content for that day, there really weren’t any negative consequences. I didn’t call their parents, give them a detention or dock them participation points. On top of benefiting the individual student and the class atmosphere, optional participation presented a great opportunity to me. I avoided having to berate disinterested students in the middle of class, and instead had an opportunity to genuinely connect with them. In one case, a student felt lost in the material we were covering and decided not to come to class. A non-threatening and private conversation allowed him to express this verbally and not through disruptive actions.

If we go with this theory, then maybe the key to discipline isn’t a list of rules: it’s an open door and relevant content. I realize that in many eyes this concept might seem totally unreasonable and flawed. What do you think?

Every now and again, it is a good idea to poke your head outside your own box and see what’s going on. This time I’m bringing you, my dear readers, into the business world, to see what knowledge it can lend to the teaching world. Nathan is an entrepreneur, investor, and consultant/advisor (read his full bio below). More importantly he’s also my husband.

The 80/20 Teacher – How the Secret to Success is Working Less

By Nathan Meffert

INTRODUCTION

Muffet Photography

In 1906, the Italian industrialist, sociologist, economist, and philosopher Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto made the observation that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, and further developed his thesis by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

Since Vilfredo’s time, the law has become widely popularized as the “80/20 Principle” or, sometimes, as the “Pareto Principle. To put it simply, the law states that:

80% of outputs (results) flow from 20% of inputs (causes)

Vilfredo’s law figured centrally into the manufacturing industry’s quality control revolution during the 1950s and 60s (“80% of defects/inefficiencies come from 20% of personnel, machinery, etc.”). The digital revolution was also driven by application of the law (“80% of errors and crashes come from 20% of bugs”). And, even more recently, the law is being applied in an even broader context to personal effectiveness (“80% of results come from 20% of activities”) and business design/redesign (“80% of sales come from 20% of clients”).

SO WHAT?

As we drill down farther into a search for a teacher’s application of the thing, I’ll put it another way:

The results you get are never, ever, going to be in a 50:50 relationship to the causes of those results. Instead, it will always be a minority of causes responsible for a majority of the results.

One of the most powerful implications here is that the majority of inputs could (and should) be eliminated completely, or else completely revolutionized. Having studied the principle at work in nature, culture, and economics for more than 10 years now myself, I say with confidence that, wherever this principle has not been mindfully applied, all systems of government, community, education, finance, and settlement are both grossly wasteful and inefficient.

Through the faithful application of the 80/20 Principle, we could all be having a much better time getting the results we want instead of struggling under the weight of full days, weeks, months, and years of wasted effort, ending up with results we’re not so sure about.

In all fact, the principle has been grossly under-applied. And that’s where you come in. It’s time to change all that.

THE EXERCISE

The universality of the 80/20 Principle/Pareto Principle is amazing. You or I literally cannot escape the damn thing. To help me prove my point, please do an experiment….

Step 1: Write out your current #1 goal for your students. (Ex., “All students will be able to order burrito in Spanish by the end of the Spring semester.”)

Before anything else, you’ve got to be clear on your goal(s) and the standards you will measure achievement by. If you haven’t done this before, make your goal clear and measurable. Leave yourself no “weasel clause”, or back door. With a clear and measurable goal there is no way of saying, “Well, I, uh, basically achieved it” – either you did or you didn’t. There’s no in-between.

Step 2: Make a numbered list of tasks you do day in and day out to move towards meeting this goal.

Go ahead and make this an exhaustive list. We may as well totally revolutionize your teaching practice right now.

Step 3: Take the total number of tasks and multiply it by .20 (20%). If the number is a fraction, round it to the nearest whole number (2.3 becomes 2, 3.6 becomes 4).

You have just figured out how many of these tasks make up 20% of the total number of tasks. (I know, sorry about the math, non-math teachers. You can do it! Or, here’s another idea: you could simply outsource the task to a math teacher down the hall, and in doing so, plant a seed for a school-wide time revolution!)

Step 4: Ask yourself this question: “If I could only work on meeting this goal with my students for 1 day per week (20% of five days!), which 20% of tasks would I keep and focus on and which 80% would I throw out?” Make a list.

Step 5 (for true time revolutionaries): Throw out the other 80% now and focus on your 20%. You don’t have a second to waste.

Spend your new free time setting up conference calls between your students and native speakers in South America, taking them on field trips, or arranging for professional mentors (other than you!) to come in to speak to your students. Read amazing stories of inspiring mentors in the subject area to your students, or…

Step 5 (lite): Make sure that every day you plan your lessons around that 20%. Do those items first. If you get the 80%, great, if not, you have still succeeded.

FINAL WORD

Enjoy – and please, please, please send me updates on your exploits as an 80/20 time revolutionary! I’m always looking for new stories and love hearing from fellow freedom fighters!

Also, for more on the 80/20 Principle, I highly recommend checking out “The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less” by Richard Koch.

Guest Writer Nathan Meffert

Nathan Meffert is an entrepreneur, real estate and angel investor, coach, and adviser to businesses and individuals in multiple industries and walks of life. His professional specialties are product design, marketing, social entrepreneurship, culture, personal effectiveness, and sustainability. Personally, he enjoys playing music, writing, language learning, travel, board sports, and martial arts. He has been the co-founder of New Leaf Regenerative Design, a longtime teacher at the Regenerative Design Institute, and, most recently, is serving as an advisor to a crowdsourced real estate investing joint venture in the desert southwest.
To get in touch with Nathan, email nathan.meffert@gmail.com. You can also find him on Twitter (@nmeffert) and on Facebook (Nathan Meffert).

For this blog entry, I am excited to interview Dr. Alene Harris, Professor Education at Vanderbilt’s Peabody School for Education.  Dr. Harris has dedicated her career to developing and researching best practices for teachers in the first three days of school.  I was fortunate enough to take her seminar when I first started teaching.

What lead you to focus so specifically on what happens the first few days of school?

What drew me to this topic was that after conducting workshops on classroom management with over 2,000 teachers across the United States, I saw repeatedly that teachers who were successful did certain things in the beginning of the school year that set the stage for student learning for the rest of the year.  I wanted to help teachers – especially first year teachers – get off to a good start.  I teach this program in three university courses each year, and my goal is that these future teachers will “stand on my shoulders” to reach teaching heights in their first year that it took me about seven years to realize.

Can you tell us a little about your program Getting Off to a Good Start?

There is an old saying that “You get one chance to make a first impression.” GOTAGS – short for Getting Off to a Good Start – is a text and workshop or class that focuses on what a teacher needs to do in the first few days of school not only to make a good first impression but also to begin a school year positively and proactively.  This sets the stage for teacher and student success for the remainder of the year. To date, GOTAGS has been used in over 20 states and with over 1,000 teachers.

If I were a new teacher, headed into my first day of school, and I could only do two things to get off to a good start this school year, what would you recommend?

First, carefully distinguish, plan, and teach class rules and class procedures, and keep them separate from goals.  The number one reason a student will choose to challenge a teacher is if they perceive that the teacher is unfair, and the number one cause of this perception occurs when a teacher confuses these three.

Second, Use your eyes and feet – as you teach, throughout the period or day, make frequent, pleasant eye contact with each student and walk among all students.  Your eye contact and physical proximity encourage appropriate student behavior.

What if a teacher doesn’t set up routines from the beginning? Can they fix things in the middle of the year?

It’s always possible to make a fresh start and improve, and such a start is most likely to have success if a teacher does it after a major break — at least after a weekend and even better after a holiday break.  In fact, I’m working on a new book, entitled Creating a New Beginning (CANB – as in you can be a more effective teacher), designed to help teachers who did not get off to a good start.

I know that one of my big challenges, as a teacher, was remaining consistent and following through with the parameters I set forth.  Are their any methods you suggest to help teachers stay the course?

First, carefully examine your parameters and determine your rationale for them.  In other words, you’ve got to believe that those parameters are important for your students’ success (and yours) in order to motivate yourself to adhere to them.  Second, consider how you can begin to self-monitor your own adherence to them. (For example, is there a visual cue of some sort you can provide yourself to help you with consistency?)

Sometimes as a teacher you make rules or routines that don’t end up being a good fit for a particular group of students.  They may have worked last year, but this year something different is called for.  How do you recommend changing routines mid-stream?

First, involve your students.  Both you and they know if a procedure is not working, and often they can have an idea to solve the problem – plus getting their involvement on the front end is likely to increase their following whatever changes are made. “Class, here is the situation.  We need to do X because of Y, but the way we are trying to do it is not working well for us.  I’m wondering what might be a better way.”  Then proceed to allow students to brainstorm possible.  And as I mentioned before, it’s always best to make  such a change after a break of some sort.

Do you have any parting advice for new teachers?

First, give yourself room to make mistakes — they are those things we learn from.  Effective teaching involves hundreds of skills, and a skill comes from KNOWLEDGE + COACHING + PRACTICE + TIME.  Every teacher has a first year in which he or she first learns what these skills should be, and then in future years each teacher sets about learning and perfecting those skills.

Second, keep in mind that each of your students is a unique and valuable human being and focus on the potential within them.  Once you have the image of the beauty within each child, try to help that child see your vision of him or her as a valuable person.  This can change the both of you.

Third, you reach students one at a time, and you will not reach them all.  (And after all, if you can reach them all, then what are the other teachers for?)  The story is told of a young boy flinging starfish that had washed up on the shore back into the ocean.  When asked how he could possibly hope to make a difference with his small efforts for the thousands of starfish littering the beach, he tossed one more into the waves and announced, “I made a difference for that one!”

Finally, remember to save some of yourself to take home each day.  The story is told of a goat herder who came into possession of a magic round of cheese — as long as he left a slice, he could wrap it in a napkin and place it in the cupboard, and the next day there was again a beautiful, whole round of cheese.  You are the cheese – save something of yourself to regenerate each night.  Then you have a whole and fresh teacher to take to your students the next day.

photo credit GOTAGS

Alene H. Harris, Ph.D., is a Research Assistant Professor of Education at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. She taught in Nashville, TN, for 16 years in suburban, inner-city, and private school classrooms before pursuing a Ph.D. in Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University.

For the past five years her focus has included the postsecondary level. As the Director of the Educational Program for the VaNTH (Vanderbilt-Northwestern-University of Texas-Harvard/MIT Health Sciences) Engineering Research Center in Bioengineering Educational Technologies, she has developed and conducted workshops in applying principles of effective teaching and learning in college-level classes. In this role she has conducted workshops for University faculties and graduate students across the country, including Vanderbilt, Northwestern, the University of Florida, the University of Washington, Duke, Harvard, and MIT.

For more information about Dr. Harris and GOTAGS go to: http://ready-to-teach.com/gotags.php