Monthly Archives: March 2020

As Simple as 1-2-3-4-5-6

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Let us make the solution to the challenges facing public education in America as simple as possible.

Providing a quality education to every child who arrives at our door is as simple as 1-2-3-4-5-6.

  1. Children need to feel special and experience what it is like to have one or more favorite teachers on whom they can depend for the long term;
  2. Students must start at whatever point on the academic preparedness continuum where we find them when they arrive at our door;
  3. Boys and girls must be able to depend on us to give them however much time and attention they need to learn from the mistakes they make, every step along the way;
  4. Kids must understand they are being asked to both learn and employ the lessons, principles, and discipline with which each of them can create success for themselves, throughout their whole lives; it is a process of success;
  5. Our children must be taught to celebrate their successes and the successes of the people in their lives, always; as success is an experience best shared; and,
  6. Educators must learn that it is the success of our students, not the promises we make, that will draw parents and guardians in as partners.

We must understand there is no one, perfect solution to the challenges of public education. Technology is but one example. Digital technology is  not the solution to the problems in education rather it is a tool, the value of which is measured by its utility to teachers and students.

We must reimagine how to ensure that everything teachers and schools are asked to do will support our mission.  The mission is to send every young adult out into the world with the knowledge, skills, and wisdom they need to find joy for themselves and their families; in pursuit of whatever meaningful goals they set for themselves.

To carry out this mission superintendents, administrators, teachers and policy makers must be willing to break from the traditions of the past. The Hawkins Model© is one example of how that might be done.

The logic behind these six objectives might be simple, but the work they will require of educators will be hard. These goals require that we embrace the notion that education is an uncertain science. It requires that we all work, relentlessly, to develop our craft.

What does a craftsperson do? They must apply all their knowledge, skills, and collective wisdom to discern the unique needs of individual children and then utilize an eclectic portfolio of tools and methodologies to instill success in the hearts and minds of those children. Not everything they do will work so they must keep striving until they find something that does. They must never stop learning and they must never give up. Teachers must never permit their students to give up and stop learning.

Our teachers must be free and willing to give fully of themselves, without fear of recrimination. Creating a quality education for all will require a level of effort, dedication, courage, and camaraderie comparable to that which our medical professionals, first-responders, and so many other men and women are demonstrating in response to Covid-19.

These men and women are heroes and the work they do saves lives and a nation. Teachers are also heroes and the work they do will save lives and, also a nation.

More than One Kind of Hunger, Part 2

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There is more than one kind of hunger. We all know nourishment is essential to the health of young minds and bodies. It is difficult to stay focused on a lesson or challenge when there is an ache in one’s belly. It is even more difficult for children who are less able to rationalize away that ache long enough to finish a task. It is vital, therefore, that we feed the bodies of our nation’s children because not only does it enable growth, it frees their minds and hearts for learning.

Kids also hunger for nurturing  relationships. Many children, when away from their parents, are desperate for someone to care about them. It is so much easier to care about oneself when someone else cares for us. In this respect, the heart is a portal to the mind. Knowing someone cares frees the mind to allocate energy to learning.

Same is true of the hunger for safety and security. We all need to feel safe from harm and kids need that safety even more. Think about a time when something happened to startle or scare you. How long did it take before you could push that unsettling experience aside sufficiently to return to one’s task? Imagine how much more difficult it is for a child.

When young children are away from their home, they feel vulnerable. This is true for all kids but especially for children who come from homes and families that are distressed. Toxic though some home environments might be, however,  it is the only home they know, and it colors their expectations.  If we wish to alter those expectations, it is essential that we strive to provide nurturance and affirmation. For some children, school may be only place they experience the comfort of unconditional, loving relationships with adult human beings.

In these awkward times in which it has been deemed inappropriate for a teacher to touch a child, remember that wrapping one’s arms around someone is not the only way to give a hug. Hug them with the warmth of your smile, the sparkle in your eyes, and the loving words you say when you greet them as they enter your classroom or depart for the day. Even a fist bump can be a hug, if done with a warm smile. A hug, whether virtual or real, is nothing more than an affirmation of how important someone is to us.

Our objective is to convey to them that sense of value in whatever way we can, because they yearn for it, even when they shy away or act embarrassed. If genuine, such hugs will win over even the most recalcitrant child, over time. Once they come to believe in our affection for and belief in them, children will begin to open themselves up to us. From that point onward, anything becomes possible.

We must strive to keep our objective at the forefront of our minds as we strive to help children create patterns of success for themselves. This requires that they feel empowered. When, however, the education process requires that mistakes be counted against students, as if they were failures—and must be recorded as failures in a teacher’s gradebook—it is contrary to our purpose. In these instances, the education process usurps a child’s power to create patterns of success for themselves by imposing on them a pattern of failure.

Patterns of failure are the genesis of surrender. Once any human being gives up and stops striving, it is incredibly difficult to pull them from the maelstrom of hopelessness. This particularly true of children.

Kids do not want to feel hopeless and powerless, they want to be winners, which is just another way of saying they want to be successful.

To be continued.

More Than One Kind of Hunger!

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Our society is learning much from its experience with this pandemic, but as the Novel Coronavirus saga plays out, it is revealing so much more. The most obvious lesson to be learned is with respect to our level of preparation for a phenomenon that is proving to have an adverse effect on, not only our health, but almost everything people do. For educators, our concern is with the impact on our nation’s students when our schools are shut down.

In schools, whether public, private, or parochial, we are learning just how vulnerable our nation’s children are in times of distress. One of the first revelations, beyond “how do we deliver subject matter, remotely,” is learning how much our students depend on us. Not only are many students hungry when they cannot attend school, they are enduring more than just a lack of food. We are seeing families unable to insure their children are being cared for when they must go to work. Given the low wages on which many American families must live, many mothers and/or fathers must work forty or more hours per week to provide a decent living for their families. Some must work more than one job, which only exacerbates the hardship s with which their children must deal.

For many kids, when there is no school there may be few, if any,  breakfasts, lunches, or snacks. One would think any doubts people might have had about the prudence of providing meals for hungry kids should be resolved, What is more central to caring for our children than making sure they have the healthy nutrition they need to learn and grow?

The suspension of so many schools will bring many other issues into sharper focus. It is not just how much our kids depend on school for healthy nutrition but also for safety, for social/emotional support, and for physical exercise, in addition to their intellectual and academic needs. We must keep kids safe from Covid-19, but when they return to school, we need to acknowledge that those schools are more than just places of learning.

As I said, in my book Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream[1], “schools  have become the social milieu in which young people live and endure.” Teachers must realize that they are more than just educators. Whether we like it or not teachers and schools are a support system for the whole child, and we must structure the education process to serve all these needs.

Some teachers have expressed reservations about the level of responsibility they would be asked to bear, under such an education process. They are encouraged to think about how much they enjoy working with their favorite students from over the years. Educators are invited to examine The Hawkins Model© that is designed to increase, for both teachers and students,  the number and duration of these special relationships. Might this not enhance the satisfaction of teachers?

We must embrace the coronavirus as the learning opportunity it has the potential to be. It is unlikely this will be the last crisis of such magnitude we will face in the span of most of our lifetimes.

[1] Hawkins, Mel, Education, Hope and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, (2013), CreateSpace.

Changing the Way We Think about what We Do?

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If we truly want to bring about transformative change, we must begin by changing the way we think about what we do. 

What does it say about the importance of relationships between teachers and students when we sever a student’s relationship with a teacher who cares about them, just because it is the end of a school year? What is the impact on a child when we move them ahead to material for which they lack perquisite understanding and, with the same stroke of a pen, separate them from a teacher with whom they feel both important and safe?

When we collect practice assignments and go over the mistakes students make, are we able spend as much time as we know we should with the kids who struggle most? Are we even allocated enough time for such a purpose? Should it be an expectation?

Does it really make sense to administer a chapter test to a child whose practice assignments suggest they are likely to fail? What would contribute more to our students’ long-term success: giving them more time to learn or by recording a “D” or an “F” in our gradebooks and then moving them on to the next lesson?

How far behind do students fall before they give up and stop trying? When we move kids along faster than their pace of comprehension and gage their performance against that of classmates, have we set them up for a pattern of failure that will follow them throughout their lives?

An athletic team can come from far behind to win a game or turn a losing season into a championship, and we celebrate not only their victory but also what they had to overcome. Do we give kids in the classroom the same opportunity to catch up and learn? Do we provide them with an equal opportunity to prove themselves winners?

For decades, teachers were expected to teach a diverse group of children in the same classroom; kids who were at different ages, with different life goals, and were at varying stages of academic development. Did we change the way we teach because what we were doing was proven to be ineffective, or did we change because it was perceived to be inefficient?

How many more things do we do with the kids in our classrooms that make little or no sense when we stop and think about them? We have taught kids the same way for generations because of tradition, even when results gave us reason to question our effectiveness.

Everything we know about early childhood development tells us that development follows an identifiable pattern but, also, that kids develop according to their own unique timetable. Are academic standards and curricula crafted around the way kids learn and develop or do they reject differentiation. Students of a given age are expected to advance down the same generic pathway, moving from one benchmark to the next, as a group, at the same relative speed. If they do not, schools and teachers are held accountable.

We evaluate achievement by comparing the performance of some kids to the performance of others rather than making sure they are each touching their essential bases. Imagine how it work if we treated early childhood development the same way we treat learning in school. Imagine labeling kids as slow because they did not roll over, crawl, walk and talk as quickly as their siblings.

There is a price to be paid when circumstances disrupt childhood development. Could the same thing be true when a child’s academic development is disrupted because there is too little time for kids to learn and for teachers to teach? Even under adverse circumstances, the brain will strive to learn, relentlessly. Do we help the brains of our students or do we get in the brain’s way?

While it may make sense to keep kids of a certain biological age together, is there any research to justify holding them to the same expectations as their classmates with respect to academic standards, development and achievement?

Far too many young men and women are leaving school only to discover their choices are limited. What does it say about what we do when the regimen through which we guide our students serves to limit rather than expand their range of choices? Could it be that the same thing has happened to educators? Have their perceptions been forged by traditions and practices that serve to discourage rather than reward divergence.

The problem when we are taught to “think alike” is that we end up “thinking alike.” How well does what we do for kids in classrooms prepare kids to enter a dynamic world that rewards broader rather than narrower visions?  What if we could do better?

Do you believe in your hearts that all kids will be successful next year or the year after next if only you work a little harder and give more of yourself?

What if disappointing academic achievements occur not because of our inability to teach and not because of our students’ inability to learn? What if unacceptable outcomes are a consequence of an education process that impedes and constrains  rather than enables and supports the efforts of teachers and students?  

What are you willing to do, differently?