Your wrong! … and my wife’s teachers never told her how to fix what she got wrong. She was just wrong. When she became an elementary school teacher, she made sure her students found out how to grow and improve. Can you imagine a baby at home learning how to walk and the baby falls and the parents get all excited and put a big red check on the diaper where the baby fell! Parents don’t do that, do they? No, parents don’t even see the fall they see the attempt, the little growth. They see the fall about to happen and they catch the child and bring them back to smiles and giggles. No, evil eye and commenting about not studying enough or not doing your homework.
School is all about kindness. I love it! Then the teachers hands back tests. The evil red check mark and the labeling grades bring the energy of the room down to serious darkness. The students have been judged and graded. Let me show you how “you are wrong, wrong, wrong!” But, if you did really bad, the teacher may lecture and berate you on how you are lazy students and didn’t study or do your homework.
I remember trying to learn something new on my own: a poem, a math problem type, a move in sports, or most anything. I’d give it a try and see what seems to work. Then I’d look to see what else I might do to get it to work. Then I’d go for a little more and more until I’d finally get it. Am I slow or what? How many times did I have to go for it to get it all working? Bingo! We set a goal and keep approximating it until we get it. It usually isn’t just once and we are done.
I was a teacher and I gave the most amazing lectures or lesson presentations. I expected after one of my wonderous presentation, every student would be as smart and practiced as me or better. I was shocked when they hardly got the basics. Then I remembered back to: tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, remind them what you told them. Three times before they get it? Is that right? Well, maybe you’ve found it takes even more attempts and practice than that. I ask, what did they get? No, No, No, it’s better to ask what they got wrong, didn’t get and note and point out to them what they got wrong. Now, I can build on their wrongness!
What gets measured, gets done! What you put energy to exists! “Wrongness >>let’s get that done!” “Wrongness>> that’s what I want to exist!” So what should we measure? What should we put energy to? As a teacher, I wanted learning and growth to exist. I wanted learning and growth to get done. That’s what I paid attention to when I learned it myself. I paid attention to what I’d learned. Now, how can I build on it? Pay attention to growth. How might I learn this new thing and connect it to what I already learned. Learning (what I got) and what was next (growth).
It’s easier to point out what a person did wrong and complain about them, then to note what they did right. You know the complainers and criticizers. Me, I always avoid them as I always felt worse after being around them. It felt so freeing when I left their judgmental stench. I always took a deep breath and felt able to be me. There was even a chance I might grow and take a daring step into something new, after I left their critical dark eye.
It used to be very hard to point out to students what they did right and to help them look for their next growth step. But wait, after I grade them, label them, they are done. That’s just them. You gave your best. They gave their best. We are done. That’s just who I am. I’m an almost perfect student, a C+ student, or whatever I usually get with the rushed, packed, full curriculum and standards. Students will be: labeled and marked wrong. I think I’ve unpacked that standard pretty well, don’t you!
Growth is what we want done and to exist, isn’t it? If we had growth, growth and more growth until all wrongness disappeared, it would be ok, wouldn’t it? I see you doubting creatures of habit. How can they learn if they don’t know what they did wrong? How else will they grow if I don’t show them how stupid and lazy they are! I was trained with this crippling, labeling methods and only pursued the few things I wasn’t beat up so bad on. These were my strengths and you know what they say about strengths: focus and stay with your strengths. Maybe they should add: because you never have nor never will be trained to grow a weakness into a strength. Hey that would be stupid. Then you would have too many strengths. I was lucky my kindergarten teacher always caught me doing something right and helped me develop the next thing.
Why is it that teachers and parents know how to applaud, catch, put energy to, and measure what we did right when we are young and then help us grow with some new stuff? Then, when we get older, all they can point out is what we did wrong and how we aren’t growing and point out our laziness? Yikes! ….. Talk about cigarettes stunting growth! Should teachers and parents carry a warning sign that says: This person could be a danger to your health?
Great coaches have the same challenge of teachers and parents. Growth and excellence are their goals. They teach them, coach them, exercise them, work them hard …. and … catch them growing and getting better. It’s just like we teach ourselves: we take on what we can handle and stretch ourselves and catch ourselves making progress. Yes, the progress is what we put energy to. We go home and think about the progress we got done.
Wait! Wait! Wait! You aren’t one of those that puts all that energy on your little goof ups and mistakes, are you? Your friend says you did amazing and all you can think about is “the mistakes”, the “wrongness” of your presentation. WOW, if this is you, you and I are well trained. We took over the teachers job! We are mistake finders, criticizers. Then of course I labeled myself as just that type of presenter. …. and of course, I’m done, the presentations over, I’ve been graded and labeled. There is nothing to do. That’s just who I am. Great presenter? No, just me, that’s who I am.
Is that what my teacher wanted me to do? No, my teacher wanted me learn and grow from my experience. But that’s how I was trained. grading trained me to focus on the my wrongness and label myself. What if we graded growth? What if we graded learning? This is what you got (learning). This is how much you grew (growth)? Measure and put energy to learning and growth, like our parents and kindergarten teacher did when we were young.
But that’s not what we do. The huge powers of society, government and even my mental state says grades! …. So let’s grade, but grade differently. We could give multiple tests on the same subject and give teaching and training between them and measure growth. Yikes! There is a way and you were about to tell me you can’t do that. Then students will intentionally do bad on the first test and good on the second test. Students are such fast learners! So growth has points and so does learning. We know what we want them to learn. We can measure learning as well. We can give them learning points too and it fills up some vessel to show accumulated knowledge.
I used to teach math. I’d give a lesson and a few problems. We’d go over them on the board. I would assign students to put them on the board. And of course, I’d try to get student who were struggling with it to put it on the board. They either had to get help from a friend, ask me or let me adjust it when we went over them (more teaching and stretching). We would talk about the problems, do some more. Then, they were required to take notes on the problem, like they were writing a book on how to do it: Words, examples and of course neat with color and arrows explaining the details. I had three groups going on at all times and they were all engaged doing problems, putting it on the board, writing notes, going over problems with me or letting me babble and teach. Are we being graded on this? No, grading was way too much work. I preferred to be wandering around the room catching them working together, figuring stuff out, explaining it in their notes or just plain doing the practice. If I did this right, grades were never a concern. But grades still are demeaning and labeling, if they grade wrongness.
We have the computers to point out what was done superbly and multiple tests to check for growth. Hey, if they get stuck on a test, let them go get help. Then they can go back to the test and get it randomized and rephrased from the computer problem bank. Knowledge is not what an “A” student has. He is a person that can grow and learn. He doesn’t have the smarts but the trained habits that let him grow himself. He lucked out and found out how to grow himself before grading labeled him and got him stuck being wrong.
Growth is addicting. If we get students focused on growth and their capableness to grow, there is no limit. Grade on growth and it exists. Grade on growth, and it gets done. Keep that vessel of what they know, points if you want, but expect to have to get a bigger one if you train growth!
Could you imagine a school that existed to grow students, not judge and label them. Could you imagine a school that sees every student as a trainable, growable person. You wouldn’t hear the fixed label comments like: Oh, that’s a bad class, oh he’s a troublemaker, oh he’s a C student. Instead you would hear: This student grew 30 points last week. This student shared their growth strategies with a group and they came up with 4 more strategies. This teacher has a green thumb and really knows how to grow students. Student can be or do whatever they want after leaving this school, they know how to grow themselves.
I wanted to learn how to speed read. I tried. I always wanted to be able to understand what I was reading and reverted back to reading slow. Education is caught in the same trap. Grading on growth is different and the pressure is to produce results, NOW! We are creatures of habit and the training of grading on growth and teaching like a kindergartener teacher is very foreign. Unpack the standard, dig into the curriculum, now that is a huge headache in itself. Now you want me to grade on growth like a kindergarten teacher. How can I teach the test or the facts and help them improve if I don’t mark them wrong? I’ve got to label them with A’s, B’s … F’s to let the parents know what stuck kind of kid they have.
The pressure is to perform! It is in the moments of extreme pressure, that who a person is, becomes exposed. This is when you just must automatically do what you have been trained to do. You go into the classroom and the students feel the pressure and they love it, they were built and trained for pressure. What do you want me to learn. I can grow and learn anything. I am a growing machine. Is that what your students do? Or do they resist and complain how hard it is and they don’t get it? They know they aren’t so smart and you want them to learn so much, so quickly.
You empathize and preach “be kind” to this poor C student who tries so hard. They look at you with their big empty eyes when you show them what they did wrong and the glaze thickens as you show them again how to do it right. They are a well trained. They are wrong, and will never really get it right, C student. It’s just who they are. …. and you have to teach them. Have fun! Have you been set up or what! LOL Could it really be, grading wrongness, and not growth, is what gets our student stuck?
We teach English, math, history, PE, but not study skills or growth and learning skills. We measure and put energy to knowledge, not growth. Knowledge by itself is stuck and fixed. Growth is alive and unlimited. Which do you want? Growth skills, you are just supposed to have, like genetics. But we get growth skills almost accidentally. Some are luckier than others in their learning skill training. Doesn’t it seem, to be sure, growth skills might need to be intentional trained. If you were trained in growth skills consistently since kindergarten, don’t you think you would have the knowledge vessel filled?
Why do you think some kids just can’t learn? It’s not poor teachers of available resources or source of knowledge. It’s how they are trained. Get the student unlabeled and unstuck and growth happens and the knowledge vessel gets filled. There are so many sources of knowledge with the internet, videos, books, webinars, …. Let alone even the poorest teacher.
If we measure growth and teach how to grow, this might work. If we put energy to growth, growth might exist in schools. Achievement is so temporary. Look at a tree. It grows, makes fruit we eat it and it gone, the tree gets trimmed and bears fruit again. Are we looking for nice apples or apple trees?
We have such a great system of caring and concerned teachers and administrators, but we do what we have been taught. We are creatures of habit and growing a working growth plan and strategy will not happen overnight. The pressures of result NOW, must be carried by the administration, like a coach growing a program. They must protect and develop his teachers. These administrators must acknowledge the result the school has and look for and catch “growing student growth”. The administrators must grade on growth, the tiniest of growth. There’s going to be lots of mistakes and reversion. It will take a steady hand, like a kid, that plays steadily at becoming an adult, until he is one. Hey, if a kid can do it, don’t you think a big administrator could do it?
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