A Climate of Outrage?

My grandchildren text me.  A possible conversation evaporates into a single word. Or worse yet into OMGs and IDKs and LOLs.   At the same time, I sense their stress levels have escalated; and with dancing lessons, soccer practice, games scheduled 2-hours away, homework, and rec-center basketball about to start, their idle moments have all but disappeared.

It used to be the TV remote was the center of power in the family room.  Now everything is handheld. And much of what these devices deliver into their world is valueless.  In the media, egos outshine ethics; celebrity ‘train wrecks’ subordinate real-life heroes; and no one wants to read about two 10- year-old boys raking lawns to raise $120 for wounded veterans when they can zero-in on how the Duggar family gets their haircuts.

And, outrage about all of this surges around us everywhere.  For many, too much of the small stuff takes us from 0 to 60 in seconds.   It feels like over the past three years, outrage has become our ‘default’ setting.   We are equally outraged when the kid at the supermarket can’t make proper change as we are at child slavery in the cocoa farms in Western Africa.

Yes, perhaps outrage is appropriate when we’re stuck on the runway awaiting departure for 2 hours or when our elderly parent waits too long, yet again, for an aide in the nursing home.  But, are we also outraged when our child doesn’t get enough playing time, when he or she isn’t invited to the birthday party, or when the teacher uses ‘principal’ instead of ‘principle’ in an email comment about a behavior problem?

This isn’t mine, but I’ve read it somewhere and I like it.  There is a damaging cycle to outrage. Obviously it begins with the quick rise from 'perception of a wrong' to white-hot anger.  It is followed by the piling on of more details and offences.  Then, there is the sarcasm, accusations, attacks, and counter-attacks.  There’s the contempt and the accompanying insults.  There’s the Tweet and the Facebook post, making it easy to stoke the outrage from the car, the dinner table, and even the bed.   Sometimes, outrage ends in chagrin and an apology; but more often, the storm of outrage just smolders out there in the world where we've left it until it eventually dies down of its own accord.

The same cycle takes place regardless of how big or how small is the impetus for the ‘outrage.’  If we could remember them and list all the things from January to now that have caused us outrage, how many of these things would cause us to wonder what was I thinking?  And what do they then cause our children to wonder about?  How are our kids supposed to filter what things in their world are worthy of outrage if everything is?

This past summer there was a picture that went viral of a drowned Syrian boy, a refugee, whose family was trying to reach Greece.  It seemed that there was more outrage over the publication of the picture than there was over the circumstances that led to the drowning.  How are we using our outrage?  What lessons are we teaching through the media?  Through our own example?

We need to remember that children are affected by the quality of the adult interactions that occur in their presence, even when they not the center of those interactions.  Our emotional demeanor, (i.e. our content, happiness, and generosity … or our disgust, anger, and aggression) influences their feelings about their world.   We become mirrors of the world -- and, when they look at adults do they see a wondrous place, or a wrathful one?   Check any source, and you’ll find tension in adults is negatively linked to childhood development and esteem.

Knowing what we know about our children's world – texts, snapchats, posts, sound-bites, emoticons – perhaps we can do more to make the real world they live in a place of interest and beauty.  There’s no end to the quotes you can find about compassion and generosity of spirit, but recently we had an adult workshop with a fabulous guest speaker who also worked with students and staff at the high school.  Calvin Terrell, the founder of Social Centric, left us with the message that our daily lives and our ‘Litchfield’ community can be better if stop making negative and judgmental assumptions about the people we encounter.  If we just let today be the day we look for some good in the everyday people we meet and if we respect their journey.  This isn’t to say we should ignore maliciousness when we see it -- just that maybe we should not see every mistake or misstep as evil and reserve our ‘outrage’ for the truly titanic issues our world is facing.

Finnish Lessons: What the World Can Learn From Finland

Finnish Lessons: What the World Can Learn From Finland

Recently, I had the fabulous opportunity to hear a keynote address by Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator and scholar, who was both incredibly knowledgeable and incredibly funny.  He has a laundry list of credentials: a Master of Science from University of Turku, a PhD. from the University of Jyvaskylä, and a Teacher’s Diploma from the University of Helsinki. He served in the Ministry of Education in Finland, as the Senior Education Specialist for the World Bank in Washington, DC., and as the Lead Education Specialist for the European Training Foundation in Torino, Italy.   He even received First Class Knight of the White Rose of Finland from the President.  He is currently a visiting Professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is how he became available to educators in New England.

Why is this relevant?  Because Finland is #1 in the world in all aspects of education – math, reading, science, etc. -- (although he admitted Finland doesn’t care about that; they only care that they are better than Sweden.)  Rather than proposing that other nations follow in Finland's path, his book Finnish Lessons documents how Finland achieved success without going through the difficult and controversial educational processes typical of the United States -- in other words, without implementing competitive practices such as school choice, school report cards, and test-based accountability.  

The United States is not doing education wrong, however.  Salhberg said that Finland and all the other developed countries regularly copy the educational ideas that come out of the United Statesand implement them in classrooms most often in very similar ways.  Salhberg cited the technological advances and concepts such project-based learning, interdisciplinary teaching, STEM, and collaborative learning.  What he reminded us of was this: the United States is significantly struggling in the other social domains that ultimately make us educationally non-competitive.  We do not fully recognize or acknowledge the tight relationship between poverty, health care, and education, for example.  According to Salhberg's research and expertise, Finland is # 1 in education because the country is also #1 in the world in other key ‘social’ factors such as the empowerment of women, health care for children, low rate of poverty, and the percentage of people reporting satisfaction with life.  In Finland, for example, both parents get paid child care leave after the birth of a baby because of the importance Finnish society places on the nuclear family.  Free, state-sponsored child care is available to working mothers.  And so on.  

Thus, underlying the success of the Finnish system is a constitutional commitment to every child’s right to great education, as well as a strong social safety net that has reduced child poverty in Finland from its peak in the 1970's – about 22%, (near the current U.S. rate) – to just 4% today.  In the United States, as is true in most countries, socioeconomic status is truly one of the keenest predictors of a child’s success in school.

My take-aways were these : 

1. When it comes to the best educational practices, Sahlberg said everyone in the world is copying the United States (perhaps a slight exaggeration on his part, not mine!)
2. When our educational achievement (our y axis, or the dependent variable) is plotted on a grid against the equality of key social factors in our society (our x axis, or the independent variable), we fall below those countries with whom we most want to be recognized and competitive. (See the chart above).

He labeled the "high achievement/strong equity" zone  ‘heaven,’ and used the Led Zeppelin soundtrack ‘Climbing the Stairway to Heaven’  to close his presentation.  

His book is titled Finnish Lessons: What the World Can Learn from Finland.

Budget Season is in Full Swing

Budget Season is in Full Swing

To date, this year's budget season has been both challenging ... and rewarding.  The challenges have been coming quickly to grips with the existing line items, from personnel to paper clips, and understanding the needs behind any new requests.  The rewards have been realizing how caring and supportive of staff and children the Board and the Litchfield community have always been.  I appreciate that the community wants to be both conservative with spending and generous in support of kids' needs.  The administrators and Central Office staff have been thoughtful.  I ask a million question, all of them beginning with 'why?' and they are still thoughtful.

The budget supports current staffing and benefits (77% of the budget) and fixed costs such as utilities and transportation (13%).  The remaining 10% supports programming, curriculum, materials, and supplies.  In addition to meeting our contractual obligations, here are the three priorities of the 2015-2016 budget: 

First, a new Math curriculum for grades K - 5.  

We are investigating a Common Core aligned program that is rich in differentiation materials and teacher and parent resources.  Common Core is not the demon so many groups paint it to be.  It is a rigorous set of standards that expect hands-on learning, complex problem-solving, and communication of ideas.  As with any new change, it's what you do with it that counts.  Litchfield’s previous math program was aligned to the requirements of the old CMT with 26 different content strands each year.  We’ve come to call that approach ‘a mile wide and an inch deep.’   The new Common Core State Standards require far fewer concepts per year and a much deeper level of understanding.  The new requirements also add ‘math practices’ to the core content expecting teachers and students to change their old strategies and incorporate more hands-on problem-solving, more conversation about how and why an answer is right, and greater fluency and facility with number sense.  The math practices expect students to persevere if a multi-step problem is difficult.

Second, the technology to support a new Math Curriculum.  

Any math program worth our investment will support this new Common Core math content and a student-centered instructional approach.  Any worthwhile program will also offer rich technology supports such as pre- and post- assessments, online skills work with opportunities for immediate feedback, teacher resources for differentiation at all levels, SmartBoard-ready lessons, and online parent supports.   We’re looking at programs which offer computer-adaptive activities that look like games, but are individualized to each student’s ability.  They repeat skills the child is struggling with until they are mastered… or escalate the skills until a child is being challenged.  The data is readily available to teachers and paraprofessionals.  We've looked at one program which when parents scan their child's homework from a device, an instructive video opens re-teaching the lesson.  The same videos are available through online links.

Finally, retaining the class sizes at the elementary schools and the diverse program offerings at the high school. 

At the elementary schools, class sizes average at or below 20.  Caseloads in Special Education are also very manageable at about 12 - 15.  We are expanding pre-school for 3’s and 4’s, but keeping classes at or below 12. 

In a small high school such as Litchfield’s, class sizes are much more variable.  Several factors play with simple arithmetic:  number of students who elect a class, weighted classes (AP, Honors, and Academic); heavily-enrolled core classes (band and chorus), and specialty courses with only one section, called singletons (AP classes, Tech-Ed, World Languages, art).   

This is easier to see by example.  Imagine this year’s junior class, for example, with 84 students.  Simple division would yield four English classes with 21 students each.   But, there may be only 12 juniors who elect AP Language and Composition and 48 students who want Honors English.  The schedule then becomes further complicated when, of the 48 students taking Honors English, 20 are in Band and cannot take English during that particular Band block.  If 14 of the 20 Honors/Band students are also taking AP US History, another singleton class, an extra section of English may now be needed to cover the inflexibilities caused by selecting these three classes in combination.  Litchfield is committed to providing programming which does not cause a junior to choose between AP US History and Band.  We do the best we possibly can in honoring students’ individual program needs through flexible scheduling and recently through the flexible (asynchronous) scheduling of a few virtual high school courses.

The Board of Education budget is understandably a collection of static numbers with a bottom line.  But, more poetically, it is the foundation on which we are building our future through the education of our children.  So side-by-side with our analysis of the figures, we should remember our accomplishments throughout the district and celebrate our children and teachers at work.  Ours IS a people business, and this budget continues Litchfield’s tradition of supporting the individual growth and development of every child.  Simply put, it’s what’s best for kids.

To view the budget presentation in easy-to-read slides, click HERE.