To be successful, focus on what successful people do

When I was coaching we had a sign above the door of the locker room that read "Practice and play like a state champion today." It was a reminder to everyone, players and coaches, that our goal was to strive for excellence in the process of becoming a successful team. We had a vision of what it would be like to win a state championship, but our daily actions needed to reflect what state championship teams do. We had to respect the process.

The same holds true for my work as a principal and for our school overall. We want to provide the best possible learning experiences for our students, and for everyone who works in or visits our building. We want to build dreams, create opportunities, and make a positive impact. So we have to have a vision of what the best schools look like and then we have to go out day by day and put that vision into to action. We have to practice and play like we are making that vision a reality.

If we get too focused on results, we can get discouraged if we aren't having the success we think we should. We can't always control the outcome, but we can control our commitment to the attitudes and behaviors that will likely produce the results we want.

Why do educators need Twitter?

I'm terrible at predicting the success of new ideas in technology. When Google came to my attention a dozen years ago, I was using Yahoo as my portal to the web. I couldn't believe anyone would want to use this plain looking search engine when Yahoo offered news, sports, and more from its home page. My early analysis of Amazon was it was nothing special. And then there was Twitter. Why would anyone want to post on this weird site where you are limited to just 140 characters? Who cares what you had for breakfast?

I never would have dreamed in a million years that millions of education related Tweets would post each day. Educators are finding Twitter a powerful way to connect, collaborate, and communicate with each other.


So why do you need Twitter? Why build a PLN? With Twitter and other collaborative tools available, educators who are working in isolation, and not connecting with people from all around the world, are making a conscious decision to do so. Isolation is the enemy of improvement. If we want to grow into the best leaders possible, we need to network with the best education leaders out there. Many of them are on Twitter and sharing their knowledge freely. 

Twitter is a place to share resources, be inspired, push your thinking, own your learning, and find new opportunities. I'm grateful to innovative educators who helped me realize the power of Twitter.

A graded paper stops learning in its tracks

Although I am still working through some of my thoughts on standards-based grading (I fully embrace the philosophy but how that translates to practice is another issue), one thing I feel certain about on the assessment topic is the need for more authentic, descriptive feedback and fewer "grades" or "marks" in the gradebook.

In his book, Embedded Formative Assessment, author Dylan Wiliam explains how learning is damaged when a grade is placed on a student paper. He cites research to support his explanation. And it completely makes sense to me and corresponds to what I've observed in my career as an educator.

Three groups of students were described in the study. One group received only a grade, another group received a grade and written comments, and the third group received only written comments.

Now we all know how productive it is to return a paper with a grade only. It's a terrible practice, but more common than we care to admit. Of course, the group that received only a grade performed the lowest for continued growth.

One might think the group that received a grade and comments would do as well as any, but the study found that students paid very little attention to the comments if there was a grade on the paper. Students who scored high enough to be satisfied with their score ignored the comments for obvious reasons--they were happy with their performance. But interestingly, students who scored poorly ignored the comments too but for differently reasons. They ignored the comments because they were frustrated and simply wanted to move on to the next topic.

I can remember feeling that way as a student too. "Wow, I really didn't get this. I'm going to have to kick it in gear on the next chapter," I thought to myself. And then I was ready to move on and did nothing to correct the deficiencies with what was supposed to be learned right now.

So as we are considering how to provide feedback to students, it seems most beneficial to provide many opportunities for practice with lots of descriptive feedback but no grade. This feedback can come from the teacher, from other students, or from strategies to help a student self-reflect.

If we want students to actually use feedback to continue learning, I would suggest teachers delay communicating a summative score until they feel reasonably confident the material is learned well based on evidence from practice work and from exit tickets and other formative measures.

It seems this is the best practice since research and experience indicate that when a grade goes on the paper, the learning stops in its tracks.