What's the Difference?

Taking a page out of the Hallowe'en playbook!

10/28/2020

End of October! Kids and parents are usually gearing up for the day that outperforms every other holiday that you can think of. But, perhaps, not this year. Classroom celebrations, trick and treating, and costume parties will be largely absent and the day may even go a little unobserved this year. Even the government, jumping on the "grinch" (sorry for the mixed metaphor) bandwagon has announced that this will be the last year for Hallowe'en fireworks. Even the thrill of mask-wearing has become a little passé as covering our faces has become a social imperative, rather than an exciting aberration!

So, let’s face it, it's pretty clear that Hallowe’en will be a little anti-climactic this year! After all, we’ve all been wearing masks for months. In fact, as we continue to navigate through the ups and downs of this remarkable time in our lives, it is really quite astounding to see the extent to which the “new” normal has simply become normal.

The real question is what will happen when the curtain finally closes on the pandemic and our collective response to it. Will things go back to the way that they were? What might change? Will our social interactions remain a little more limited – fewer dinners out? Avoiding movie theatres? Working remotely? Taking more walks and hikes? Fewer evening meetings and more family dinners? Staying a little closer to home on holidays? What do you think the “new” “new” normal might look like in your household?

My hope is that we all come out of this having slowed down a bit. That we take more time to appreciate our families and close friends; that we look around more and spend more time in the out of doors; that the highways remain just a little bit emptier and rush hour remains more muted.

For those of us who have grown up and lived in the post-war era, this is the first real collective challenge that we have faced as a society. As much as it has had an impact on our lives and ways of looking at the world, it is bound to have a more profound, long-term impact on our children. Decades ago, in school, I saw a movie entitled "You are what you were when". It looked at how generational values had been created in times of social and economic change. Ideas about finance and risk were formed during the Depression, heroism and self-sacrifice during World War II, and a belief in continuous progress during the 50s and 60s. There is no question but that a year of global pandemic will have a major impact on our values and perspectives going forward.

So, as a parent, I am looking at this experience as an opportunity for a bit of a re-boot and as a unique chance to strike a productive balance between managing the demands and lures of technology, with a return to a better quality of life.

In the best of worlds, the disequilibrium of the pandemic will leave our lives more in balance. And that is not such a scary thought – even on Hallowe’en!

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School in the Time of COVID (with apologies to Gabriel García Márquez)

8/26/2020

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Ever since I was a kid, I have always avoided riding a roller coaster. The ups and downs, sharp turns, gut wrenching plunges and sudden stops have never held any great appeal for me. Clearly this was a mistake. If I had embraced the "thrills" of being yanked one way or the other between moments of utmost calm and abject fear, I would have been much better prepared for navigating my way through the past five months. Having said that, we may have not reached the end of this wild ride, but I am hopeful that we have hit that last ratcheting slow down that means that we are almost ready to finally get off.

Next Tuesday, school starts again. Actual, go to class, see your teachers, reconnect with your friends, kind of school. For those of us who have been haunting echoing halls and empty classrooms since last March, these are enervating and exciting times. Right now, the building is buzzing with activity. Rooms are being rearranged, organized and decorated to welcome everyone back, teachers and tutors are excited to reconnect with their students and even the various new systems and protocols that we are putting in place are not getting in the way of excitement and anticipation of next week's restart.

So what will the "new normal" look like? To be honest, as much as I groused about it at the time, our dry run in June (two weeks, voluntary, part-time attendance) both gave us great insights into how this can work, and noticeably lowered our collective angst about the prospect of all being here together again.

The routines that we established in June for health checks, hand-washing, and sanitizing surfaces and equipment seem much less daunting to re-establish now. In place of the smaller numbers we had to manage last Spring, this time we have our designated learning groups (or cohorts) to help us in the process of education and collaboration between and among students and teachers. We have organized our arrivals, departures, play spaces and even our washrooms to ensure safe, controlled and manageable interactions.

Will it be perfect? Not a chance. There will be glitches, unexpected complications, and moments of uncertainty as we tackle these new challenges. We have been fortunate at KGMS to have had a highly dedicated staff, and tremendously supportive parent partners to help shepherd our students through a time of great anxiety and abnormality for all of us. Next week we take a strong step forward to re-establish the routines, personal connections, and sense of community that we have all been missing.

So, as we head back, I want to express my gratitude: to our families, thank-you. None of us signed up for this, but that didn't stop you from stepping up and filling the gap the closing of our school left for your children; to our faculty and staff, to a person, you have been outstanding in your professionalism and dedication in the service of our kids as you made a complex series of transitions appear seamless and natural; and, finally, on a personal note, I have been incredibly fortunate to have been surrounded by an amazing leadership team who have worked through breaks, weekends and summer holidays so that we can be ready to welcome all of our students back next week for the beginning of a safe and productive school year. You have gone far above and beyond - and it has made a world of difference!

Let me close with a quote from Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera" :

"It was the time...without hurry or excess, when [all] were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other mortal trails, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore. ”

It's my belief that that shore is just ahead of us now and that our collective effort will get us there together.

See you next week!

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Back to School: A tentative step back towards normal

6/3/2020

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First day of school! Always a time of excitement, a little nervousness, and anticipation for a new beginning. This year we have had the experience in spades! September 1st we opened the doors on what everyone assumed would be a typical year at school with all of its hills and valleys, great days (and sometimes not so great days), and halls and classrooms full of energy, laughter and learning. Who knew? We bid farewell to our students on March 12th for Spring Break, expecting them to be back in a couple of weeks and now, two and a half months later, that return has finally come to pass!

In the meantime we had another first day of school. April 1st was the opening of KGMS: Virtual, our new face to face, real time experience in teaching and learning from home. The connections were still there, the conversations and the sharing of ideas were kept alive, but in the depths of a global pandemic, that was as close as we could get.

Finally, after two months of connecting exclusively on-line, this week we were actually able to take a baby step towards a full return to school in the coming months. About half of our students have returned this week while the rest have continued their online classes and tutoring at home. Needless to say, we were all a bit nervous about what it might mean.

The school had been empty and silent for months. There were many days when I was the only one here and the halls, instead of echoing with happy shouts and conversations, were eerily quiet as we all waited for the day when the doors would open again. That happened on Monday. Our third "first day of school" this year!

Things looked very different for the first arrivals. Classrooms were stripped bare, desks were centred in masking taped islands to keep everyone a safe distance from one another, and students were greeted by a health check, hand-sanitizer, and an escorted walk to meet their teachers. The every other day model that we adopted for our elementary students meant that the whole class still got to meet regularly online and that the students who chose to continue learning at home still saw their tutors and teachers every day. It is not business as usual, but it is a start.

I have had the absolute pleasure of being the official daily "greeter and health checker" for the high school over at our Annex campus, and I can't begin to describe the pure joy of personally welcoming the various cohorts of our returning secondary students as they arrive at school. The set-up is a bit weird, but their teachers and many of their friends are there, and they have been thrilled with the chance to reconnect in person.

Needless to say, this is just the test drive. All of us have made major changes to our habits and lifestyles over the past few months, and school is no different. The lessons that we have learned, and continue to master will inevitably have a profound impact on how we teach, gather, and interact with one another. But even as uncertainty still hangs in the air about what things will look like in September, you can be sure that the next "first day of school" will be like every other one with students and teachers and tutors coming together to learn and enjoy each other's company in whatever form it takes.

That is the one thing about schools that never changes!

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Start Summer Early? You have got to be kidding! (V-Day +12)

4/13/2020

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Read any school website in any city, province or country and you will find something like: "We work in partnership with parents and extended families to maximize the learning experience of our students". Traditionally that has meant some combination of regular communication, encouraging parent volunteerism, an open door policy and numerous school community events.

Until the past month, it has never meant "parents we need your active help in teaching our kids". With its emphasis on remote and virtual learning, education in the age of pandemic has come to redefine the school, family partnership. All of a sudden we have been thrust into a new paradigm. Students stay home, teachers reach out, parents, extended family members, and caregivers help to deliver the goods. This is not what any of us signed up for. The greatest joy in teaching has alway been the daily face to face connection with students. Personal satisfaction coming not from laying on a curriculum, but rather from seeing, first hand, the growth in student knowledge, confidence and productivity that comes with careful and deliberate instruction, support and personal connection.

So how does that play out in the new virtual learning environment? For us it means, as much online face-time as possible. It means regular meetings, office hours, one on one time with a tutor, small group instruction in a virtual classroom. It also means, for the first time for everyone, that families can have a front-row seat in the learning process. No longer is the home school partnership defined by the limits of emails, phone calls, and occasional parent/teacher/tutor meetings. It has become a legitimate team effort in real time. Teachers delivering programme, and families providing emotional support, gauging when their child needs a break, or a snack, or simply to disengage from their screens. It's not the model that we are used to, and it has totally redefined, perhaps forever, how schools and families define their partnership.

The perennial question, "what did you do at school today?" has been flipped. No longer is it a dinner table conversation where an account of each child's day is prodded by strategic parental questions. These days it is found in an end of the day chat on Zoom, or Hangouts, or Meeting or whatever other platform teachers are using to connect with their students. For the first time in their careers, teachers haven't spent the day with their students, but parents have.

This morning, a local education reporter commented that the current situation was too stressful for parents and teachers and that the government should simply declare that summer holidays should begin immediately and put this remote learning experience out of its misery.

There may come a time when that will happen, but to even pose it now only demonstrates a basic ignorance of what is actually happening in homes and school communities. The days have structure and focus, students are connected with their peers, and teachers, and tutors, in most cases, face to face every "school" day. Parents are engaged in student learning in a rare and positive way, not just task masters at homework time, but as partners in supporting and connecting with their child's school experience.

Is it perfect? No. Is it better than attending school? Well, much has been lost, but some interesting things have been gained that are bound to inform educational practice, and parenting, in the future. Anyone who thinks that our kids would be better off if we ended this experiment really has no idea what they are talking about!

Nobody asked for this. As a life-long educator, I have never seen anything like it. It has been an amazing revelation both as a teacher and as a parent. The years of lip service to the school/home relationship are over and a new reality has set in. It's still rough around the edges, but it is working.

So, thanks to all of the dedicated educators that I work with every day, and especially to my own children's teachers who strive to make every day a challenge that is manageable and often quite fun! But especially thanks to those families out there who, in the middle of a global pandemic, are working tirelessly to maintain a sense of normalcy in their child's lives.

I cannot think of a better partnership.

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Building Community in a virtual world: V-Day (+5)

4/5/2020

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It's a quiet Sunday morning. Looking out the kitchen window I can see a hockey net set up on the patio, a pitch-back and baseball gloves in one corner of the yard, and horseshoes strewn in another. The playgrounds are closed, outdoor tennis and basketball courts are locked up or surrounded by caution tape and so we have been forced to create our own alternative outdoor activity option for ourselves and our two teenaged boys. In addition, we are lucky in North Vancouver, there are beautiful wilderness parks and trails and a broad selection of places to walk the dog, or go for a hike and still maintain responsible social distancing. The streets are quiet, rush hour is a thing of the past, most stores are shuttered and theatres and cinemas are dark. It is tough to maintain a sense of community when our biggest public duty is to avoid being too close to one another.

So, what about school? School is the ultimate community builder. When Spring Break ended, our sons, after sitting around for two weeks, were dying to reconnect with their friends and their teachers. By contrast Rheanne and I had spent the previous three weeks in constant communication with our peers as we worked at putting together virtual learning plans and structures for our respective schools. For us, the compulsory "staycation" became more of a "workation" and, as last week began, all of us who had been exploring platforms, building teaching and learning sites, and ramping up our own technical skills, held our collective breaths as our teachers and tutors came back online and we began the headlong rush towards an April 1st launch of our virtual learning programmes.

V-Day was on us in a flash, and right on schedule, miraculously, wonderfully, our students reappeared in our lives. To be honest we didn't know what to expect. Like us, they had been cooped up in their homes for over two weeks where your community shrinks to four walls and is made up of you and your nuclear family. It was a great reunion, lots of laughs and smiling faces (with maybe a few tears offline) as we began to adjust to this new definition of community. No fist bumps and corridor banter, no fort building and shooting baskets together on the playground, no walking to the corner at lunch to find some unhealthy snack but still, it was there. The sense of community and belonging hadn't been broken by weeks of self-isolation, it had been strengthened. And, on the strength of that community, the process of teaching and learning began anew. It wasn't the same, but it wasn't all that different either. There was the give and take, the laughter, the light of understanding, and the quiet asking for help - in other words - school was back in session.

So, even though we only have our first week under our belts, here are two take-aways for me from the past five days.

1. Community means everything. I realized that I had taken for granted the power of networks and mutual support systems. My spring break was spent leaning on our network of school Heads from the lower mainland and across the country for their insight and support; our KGMS Board met regularly through Zoom to discuss issues and offer ideas; and, I especially profited from the energy, creativity and dedication of our school leadership team - four remarkable women who collectively reinvented our programme and refocused our financial and business plan and gave us the power to move forward to support our kids.

Last week I had told everyone that we would have to treat this week like it was the beginning of the school year. We would have to establish new routines and expectations, redevelop our "classroom" protocols, and get our students back into the swing of learning. I was totally wrong. Our students came roaring back, happy to have the structures of school returned to their lives, over the moon to reconnect with friends, tutors and teachers, and excited to get back to the business of learning.
Our staff was equally thrilled to see their kids, to touch base with colleagues and to have something to take their attention away from the dire news that seemed to constantly fill the airwaves. They have been amazing, retooling their programmes, adjusting their teaching and tutoring styles, mastering new communication platforms and doing what they love, working with students.

I had worried that our school community might be broken, it has grown stronger in adversity.

2. Common cause strengthens family. Our boys, although frustrated that they have been cut off from their friends and that many of their favourite pursuits (baseball, basketball, dance, theatre, etc.) have been cancelled, have still remained resilient. They have set up their home offices, and have thrown themselves into this new world with determination (if not enthusiasm!). They too have enjoyed the chance to reconnect with their larger school community. And, if Rheanne and I used to spend half our time talking about school, and kids and programme challenges, now it seems like we devote about 150% of the day doing it! Having said that, I get the better of that deal as she is the most creative and talented educator that I know. And, there is always something new for me to learn.

Finally, one added benefit of no practices, swim classes, or evening meetings is that there are more games nights, family puzzles have re-emerged on our dining room table, we have resurrected nightly family dinners and discovered, thanks to virtual school quiet hour, the pleasure of having lunch together most days.

On Friday after school we had a staff virtual "Happy Hour". Over sixty of us (relegated to postage stamp sized windows on our respective computer screens) raised a glass together, talked over one another, were serenaded by our music teacher, and shared war stories about the week just passed. In other words, it was business as usual.

If this is what turns out to be the "new normal" for a while, I think that we are going to be okay.

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Going Virtual - School Like we've never known V-Day (-5)

3/28/2020

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When I started teaching, it was with a backdrop of blackboards (or green boards in the updated classrooms), chalk all over the arms of my blazer, pens and paper, and keypunch rooms for computer studies. Technology was limited to overhead projectors (the tech dream come true for math teachers); autoload movie and filmstrip projectors, and gestetner and ditto copiers. Photocopiers were reserved for wealthy businesses, and cell phones, laptop computers and video screens were something that you only saw on Star Trek (the original TV series that is!).

In that world, if a disaster hit, school would be shut down, shuttered and not reopened until the coast was clear. But luckily, we are not living in that world. We are living in a time and place where almost everyone is interconnected, information transfer and communications are instantaneous, and every home office, kitchen table, and basement rec room can become a combination of classroom and movie studio. This is the new framework for virtual school.

Just to clear, virtual school, as it is just starting to be delivered, is not online learning in the way that it has been practiced in the past few years. What had been "cutting edge" a month ago, is now passé. We are no longer talking about a student completing work and having it marked and returned remotely, where teacher/student contact is primarily by email and text, and the relationship is more clinical than personal. Virtual school is face to face, in real time, with not only teacher or tutor and student interacting, but classmates, popping up around the screen like some 21st century Brady Bunch intro, talking and sharing and joking with one another. To be honest, it's not as good as being together in the same room, but it is way better than the alternatives.

Next Wednesday, April 1st, KGMS goes live (well, virtually live anyway!). There will be an eclectic mix of direct instruction, real-time one on one tutoring, virtual hangouts, small, live, teacher-led learning groups, face to face personal counselling, SLP support, and self-regulation coaching. In addition, students and families will have access to a bank of resources and activities that can enrich learning even when not directly interconnected.

Will it work? Will it do all of the things that currently happen in our bricks and mortar school building? Who really knows?! All I can tell you is that it will be a product of careful and meticulous planning; enthusiastic professionals teaching and learning themselves as things evolve; and students, who will be tentative at first, but who will rise to the occasion and do the best that they can in this new world of school!

The last few weeks have been an incredible roller coaster, all of our lives have been turned upside down and inside out and many of those things that we have always taken for granted have been, one by one, closed or restricted or become too risky to do. Our challenge, in this time of becoming incredibly insular and fearful, is to begin to rebuild community, to reconnect with friends and colleagues, and educators with their students and their families. The COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 has now become part of our collective global experience. The larger world will never be quite the same, so let's do our best to preserve the things that we value in our own lives, and work together for the benefit of our children.

Today, for us, is Virtual Day minus 5. The countdown officially started yesterday with a "Zoom" staff meeting with over 75 colleagues reconnecting and decompressing a little bit realizing that they were not alone in facing these new challenges. None of us; students, families, educators, or administrators signed up for this. But here it is anyway!

As I said to our KGMS community this week, Barack Obama had it right in his first Inaugural Address in January 2009 when he said: "The world is changing and we must change with it."

I can guarantee that he wasn't thinking about the world with which we are currently dealing, but it is still good advice for these remarkable times.

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Memory on Overload!

9/16/2019

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A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak at the ResearchED National Conference in London (UK). One of the unintended benefits of speaking to teachers, educational researchers and parents about what we are doing in our Universal Design approach to working with our students at KGMS, is that it forces me to reflect about why we do what we do. Almost invariably I end up turning back to some of the research that drives different parts of our programme and what it looks like in practice in our classes. On occasion it also makes me think twice about certain practices and whether or not we can do them better.

Many of our students struggle with Working Memory challenges. Working memory is the ability to hold information in the short term while performing complex tasks. It incorporates the ability to "draw on past learning or experience to apply to the situation at hand or to project it into the future". As an analogy, I recently heard on Quirks and Quarks that while the "hard drives" of long term memory in our brains can store an impressive 100 terabytes of information, our RAM - or working memory - holds very little but that limited data is critically important to the management of our moment to moment operations.

"It’s like mental juggling", says H. Lee Swanson, PhD, a professor of education with the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. “As information comes in, you’re processing it at the same time as you store it,” he says. "A child uses this skill when doing math calculations or listening to a story, for example. She has to hold onto the numbers while working with them. Or, she needs to remember the sequence of events and also think of what the story is about" .

Unfortunately, teachers can overload a student's working memory capacity before he or she has the chance to cement it in their long-term storage. Often it is inadvertent and done mistakenly with the best of intentions. For example, if a teacher is thinking of "multiple modes of presentation" of materials (a basic principle of UDL) or gets caught up in the myth of "learning styles" and thinks in terms of auditory vs. visual learners, she or he might decide to present information in two different ways at the same time. Many teachers make the mistake of verbally giving directions, while posting them on the white board or SMARTBoard simultaneously. Faced with two discordant inputs of the same information, students can become confused and their working memories overloaded. A classic example of this, and one that most of us suffered through in school, is having a "read-aloud" session while the class follows along in their own books. Whether it is the teacher reading, or a series of students, the result is the same. The reader never reads at the same speed as the listeners. Consequently, everyone in the class is getting two out of sync inputs. What they hear and what they are seeing on the page do not match. Working memories are overloaded, and no-one can actually follow the plot.

Contrast that with a typical primary classroom where the teacher reads from a picture book and the students look at reinforcing images. Two complimentary inputs rather than competing ones. The visual image supports and reinforces the auditory inputs rather than muddling them.

When I think of my own experiences as a learner. I reflect that a lecture with visuals, or a short documentary film gets lodged in my long-term memory much more quickly than something listened to in a podcast or read in a book. It is important to remember that reinforcement, rather than duplication, is the key. And that when we think of multiple modes of presentation, it is not about learning styles, it is about managing our cognitive load and cementing our knowledge in our long-term memories.

Learning takes place when students successfully transfer new information from their working memories into their long-term memories. Once those decks are cleared, their working memories are open to absorbing new knowledge and begin the process over again. Long-term memory is like having a database in your brain. You can draw on any of your stored memories without effecting your ability to add new learnings. The faster and more efficiently that we can support our students in accomplishing this, the more their minds are open for business to learn new things!

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5 Things I learned about the Upside of Learning Down Under

4/12/2019

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Over the March Break, I had the privilege of speaking at an international Special Education Conference in Perth, Australia about our work here at Kenneth Gordon. Although it was a great opportunity for me to share our philosophy, approach, successes and challenges, the real learning came from having the chance to discuss ideas with researchers, teachers and other professionals from a different part of the world who work every day with students like ours.

I came back to school with a wealth of new insights, a library shelf worth of recent research to read and digest, and a great extension of the professional network of people that I share ideas with online. Upon reflection, here are my five main takeaways from my time in Perth.

1. Educators and parents ignore the body of solid research about how kids learn and develop at their own risk (and that of their students and children). Modern technology has given us the tools to understand how information is processed in the brain, and where and how different cerebral functions have an impact on learning. Considering that written language is a relatively recent cultural innovation in human development. It can be understood that the ability to read expertly (decode language and understand its meaning and context) depends upon adapting parts of the brain that were never intended for that purpose. One of the other speakers at the conference who is a recognized world-leader in understanding this field is Paris-based, Stanislas Dehaene who is a leading researcher about the cognitive neuroscience of language and number processing in the human brain. He delves deeply into this area in his book: Reading in the Brain. It is his contention that:

Parents and educators must have a better understanding of what reading changes in a child's brain. Children's visual and language areas constitute an extraordinary machine that education recycles into an expert reading device. [There is no question that] increased knowledge of these circuits will greatly simplify the teacher's task.

To be honest, after reading his research and speaking with him about it, I am convinced that he is right and that his findings can push us in the right direction. How simple it will be is a totally different discussion!

2. A systematic and explicit early teaching of the correspondence between letters and speech sounds is of great benefit to all children learning to read. It has become painfully clear that fads such as "whole language" or "reading recovery" are inefficient and often completely ineffective methods of teaching reading. Teaching by using a sequential phonetic approach offers the students the tools necessary to unlock the door to reading acquisition. As the student reads, he/she can apply the rules of our language and analyze what is written for greater understanding. This Synthetic Phonics approach (such as we use through our Orton-Gillingham trained tutors) is the learning of phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and their corresponding graphemes (the written symbol for each phoneme) and, combined with Analytic Phonics (whole-word approach) which breaks down a whole word to its parts with the help of decoding, are all essential components of learning to read and correspond perfectly to current brain research.

3. It is important to remember that the issue in reading is not language acquisition. Almost all of our students approach reading with a rich vocabulary and understanding of meaning and syntax built in through years of talking and listening. Reading is just the process of establishing a visual interface between the symbolic representations of language on a page or screen and the massive database of words and phrases that are already imprinted in our long-term memories. As a result, the debate between coding and comprehension is a false dichotomy. They are not an either/or situation. Written language comprehension is simply the matching of decoding skills with existing spoken language comprehension. Expert reading is mostly a function of processing speed.

4. The acquisition of math skills follows many of the same patterns and pathways that the mastery and manipulation of sounds, words and language do. Daniel Ansari is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Western University in London, Ontario. Part of his research focuses on working out which brain regions are involved in our ability to calculate. How is brain activation during calculation affected by the particular arithmetic operation being performed (e.g. do different brain regions subserve subtraction and multiplication)? And, does the type of problem-solving strategy result in the use of different brain networks? he is looking for answers to these questions in search for a better understanding of how the brain enables us to become mathematically fluent. What his research has determined is that the early acquisition of numeracy skills (number recognition and value, ordination, place value, etc.) is a great predictor of future math fluency. Jumping too early into computations, without mastering the basics, leaves students perpetually "behind" as maths become more complex.

5. There is no, "one right approach" for every student. (Spoiler alert, I already knew this!). In UBC professor Linda Siegel's book Not Stupid, Not Lazy: Understanding Dyslexia and Other Learning Disabilities she cites the excellent work being done in early literacy by the North Vancouver School District in the last decade. However, as she notes, even with a comprehensive approach that saw almost 90% of the general school population hit expected literacy levels by Grade 5, the results for students with learning disabilities still hovered around the 20% level. One thing became very clear as I met with educators from Australia and South-East Asia was there was no alternative to face to face, one on one work with students as a path to expert reading. Forget about the gimmicking programmes, and quick fixes, learning to read is a science and requires steady, repetitive work.

So, in the final analysis, the one real "revelation" that came out of my week on the other side of the world is that while research, analysis, and the anecdotal experiences of other great educators provide great insights and learnings, there is no substitute for roll up your sleeves work, day after day, to ensure real success for our kids.

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Balancing your Cognitive Load

11/20/2018

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Working memory is a balancing act. We all juggle pieces of information to solve problems, understand different situations and acquire new knowledge. The amount that we are able to retain and manipulate in our short term working memories is called our cognitive load. The average person can only retain about seven chunks of new information at a time and can usually manipulate only about half of it. Cognitive load theory uses "knowledge of the human brain to design teaching strategies that will maximize learning" for students. In essence it is really looking at how to optimize to load on individual students' working memories to avoid overload and preventing them from mentally shutting down and failing to learn new concepts.

Simply put, learning takes place when students successfully transfer new information from their working memories into their long-term memories. Once those decks are cleared, their working memories are open to absorbing new knowledge and begin the process over again. Long-term memory is like have a database in your brain. You can draw on any of your stored memories without effecting your ability to add new learnings. It is one of the reasons why learning processes tend to be sequential, as each new piece of information or concept is laid out and applied on the foundation of previously acquired knowledge. In other words, the more that you can draw on your long term memory, the more you can reduce the cognitive load on your working memory and optimize your learning.

Recently, the Centre for Education Statistics and evaluation in New South Wales (Australia) released a study entitled Cognitive Load Theory in Practice: Ideas for the classroom. It looks at three key steps in the learning process that vary according to the level of knowledge and understanding housed in a student's long term memory - their personal baseline.
The steps are simple and not surprising:
1. When teaching new content to students without much pre-existing knowledge, teachers should provide students with lots of detailed, fully guided instruction;
2. As the students’ knowledge and skill increases, teachers should provide a mix of guided instruction and problem-solving practice; and,
3. Finally, as students become very proficient, teachers should provide minimal guidance and allow students to practise their skills with lots of problem-solving tasks. Some students will progress to independent problem-solving faster than others.

The study goes on to outline seven different teaching strategies, with examples, of how to optimize cognitive load and maximize student learning. Two of these strategies in particular resonated with me. The first because it was something that was fundamental to our Universal Design approach; and the second because it provided a great insight as to how we could improve our own practice.

The study recommends that information be presented both orally and visually at the same time. It notes that our working memories have "two separate ‘channels’ – one for dealing with visual information, and another for dealing with auditory information. By spreading the delivery of information across both of these channels at once, teachers can manage cognitive load and make it easier for students to learn the information." This can be done by communicating information using both images and sound. Typically, our teachers always review the outline of the day verbally while pointing at the visual schedule on the front wall. The two inputs reinforce each other and cement the knowledge more firmly in long-term memory. We call it a visual support.

However, the study also presents a cautionary note. It reminds teachers to limit "inessential information" that might clutter the student's working memory and lead to overload and shut down. By inessential information it means inputs that are either irrelevant to the central learning at hand, or redundant. Specifically, if the identical information is being presented in two different modes it can potentially confuse or overload working memory rather than reinforcing learning. For example, if a teacher puts a long quote up on the SMARTBoard and then proceeds to read it out loud, the two inputs compete for attention in the learner's mind causing confusion and making it more difficult to absorb the learning.
See, I told you that it was a delicate balancing act!

When schools and teachers spend time talking about Executive Function, usually a critical component of their concerns revolve around the need to optimize working memory. Balancing students' cognitive loads in a systematic and deliberate fashion through carefully constructed teaching strategies is a key component in maximizing student learning. This study goes a long way in supporting all schools to move more deliberately down that path.

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With IEPs, the Medium is the Message about learning

11/4/2018

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One fall, before most of the adults in my school were born, I gave up on an undergraduate course in programming at the University of Toronto (involving key punch cards with lines of code and searching reams of paper for error messages). In its place, I transferred into a philosophy half-course taught by Marshall McLuhan. It was a rambling, eclectic mix of communication theory, the impact of hot and cool media, and a critique on how the industrial model of education was designed to stamp out differences in learners in order to make them into conforming members of society as a whole. For McLuhan, classrooms were like a typewritten page with the heading (teacher) at the top and straight lines of words (the students) laid out in neat rows below; schools themselves were little more than assembly lines producing standardized graduates in the same way Henry Ford had churned out Model T's in the 1920s.

More than forty years later, the analogy often still holds true in many of our schools and school systems. They are still primarily built on a mass production, standardization, model. They start with the proscribed curriculum and learners are asked to adapt to it as best they can. Students enter, are delivered a programme designed to meet the learning style of the mainstream, and then exit - more or less successfully - to move on to the next stage in their educational lives. It is an assembly line system, softened only by the professionalism of the people delivering it. Replicated in community after community, it is the McDonalds of education. Now, in fairness, not all schools or even school districts conform to this model. There are lighthouses where flexibility and individual student needs trump the constraints of textbooks and exams. But it takes vision and leadership to break these bonds in a culture that often demands a standardization of approach. These systemic expectations may be driven by rigidly constraining working conditions agreements (think "class size and composition"), by budget priorities, or by public perceptions and political expediencies that are driven by the results on high-stakes tests.

Whatever the reason, what should be a universal design for learning to meet the needs of all learners has been flipped on its head to mean "one size fits all" schooling and equity in educational opportunity, has been replaced by equal access to programmes, but not learning.

We are fortunate as a small, independent option to be free of many of these constraints. By contrast, what we try to offer is based on a mass customization model. This is the essence of creating a path to inclusion through applying the principles of Universal Design for Learning. Although the wide variety of structures, supports, teaching/learning approaches etc. are accessible to all learners, there is no question but that at the end of the day we are delivering individual programmes for each and every student. Our slogan could maybe be taken not from McDonalds, but from Burger King - you know - "Have it your way!" It is our on-going mission to differentiate the learning experience for each individual child and young adult and to help them to find their personal pathways to success.

Last week our staff sent home IEPs for parent information, reflection and feedback. It is critically important for us to ensure that the pathway and priorities for each individual student be laid out and her or his progress tracked and reported on throughout the school year. The macro principle of UDL is "what is necessary for one is good for all", but the micro principle of "meeting each child's needs within the larger context of the group plan" is even more important to ensuring student success. When you apply the principles and best practices of Universal Design to create a welcoming and varied learning environment for everyone, the fine tuning for each individual student becomes just that much easier!

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