WAMPTTT-20, March 18, 2020: The Power of Feedback

In these uncertain times, we are all learning powerful lessons about what we're capable of, what had escaped our notice before, and what is possible. Please listen to this audio blog post sharing my thoughts about a powerful way to support our children through at-home learning. We will get through this together! In hope,

A Long Time Coming/Publishing Baby Steps

Dear Friends,

It has been too long! My promise to self in this new year and next season is that I will consistently share on this blog the many thoughts and experiences I have in education and beyond.  Life has been a blur! But I realize that I need to just build my story here, week by week.   So that's my new plan. 

Today, I am here to encourage someone.  I want to say to those who are educators who also write: you are not alone!  Keep that pen flowing! The journey to publishing traditionally, if that's your goal, can seem unending.  It's quite discouraging for busy education professionals who lack the time to pursue an agent and the rest...but I've discovered that I just have to get out there, and do it a bit at a time, and keep learning...

This past summer, I attended my first  class on picture books at the Highlights Foundation retreat center in Pennsylvania.  Absolutely amazing!  This January I'll attend a workshop around picture book revision, I am very close to self-publishing my first children's book and song, and I now know how to get my book into my local library system.  Progress! But the thing I want to report today, that makes me so proud, is something I'd sent out to my whole world (via Paperless Post)...my first children's story with Highlights Hello magazine is set to publish in 2020.  That, for me, is a big deal. The text is literally about 20 words, as the magazine is for ages birth-two.  But it's Highlights! I have so much history with them...and am determined to build more...

I'll keep you posted when the piece comes out.  Until then, be encouraged, fellow writers! Your--our--teacher voice is so needed!

An Invitation

[Disclaimer: I'm excited about this simple discovery...  I'd insert one of those Paperless Post animated flyers here if I knew how!]

Last week, I attended a writing class for aspiring children's authors, led by  a set of successful children's authors.  In this class, we learned about craft and participated in critique groups.  In one of the critique sessions, our instructor expertly guided our team in supporting a colleague as she shared a traumatic experience...In a show of empathy, our author coach told us about a book she'd published that was not a great seller, but was a fictionalized autobiography of growing up with a chemically dependent parent.

Later, she and I talked about the cathartic benefit of getting these experiences out on paper.  She shared that she'd changed some details of her own life for the benefit of the YA story, but that yes, it had absolutely helped her process.  I asked her thoughts about how teachers should go about getting these books into kids' hands. After all, as she'd shared, topics of abuse, neglect and family trauma are not feel-good stories, and don't headline publishers' rosters.  They are not emphasized when selling to librarians or teachers, and often these important books--"mirror experiences," in the words of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop--become obscured and invisible.  The author told me, wisely, that  we just have to make sure we give them to kids we know are struggling with certain challenges at home. Then I realized mid-stream in our conversation, that I knew the answer to my own question...it went beyond sharing particular books with particular kids. Here's what I realized...

My first thought was, yes! Let's give the right book to the right kid to make sure they see it.  But then I thought about Mr. Manny Scott, the author and speaker I'd recently seen who shared how carefully he'd hid his family drama from schools due to shame and isolation.  How many of the kids who need these books, I thought, would never let on that they do? So how can we rely upon our knowledge to know who should have access to them? 

My next thought? Book talks. Fountas and Pinnell, renowned literacy experts, tout book talks as powerful ways for teachers to give little "commercials" in their literacy classrooms, to expose kids to new books, new authors, new content.  I realized in my conversation with the author that this is the answer.  We must encourage children to access these books that have the potential to shore them up in their hardest times--this means sharing them with everyone and just making them available...Not necessarily choosing who should read  or know about a particular title--just sharing...and letting the books find the hungry hands that need them.  

And so, I am inviting myself--and I want to invite you--to do just that. Find some of these books.  Read some. Share as book talks and make copies available. Make YOURSELF available. Maybe we can be someone's lifeline...or at least point to one...

Closing the Feedback Loop to Nowhere

Feedback in education Is like oxygen. Both students and staff members feed off of the information and direction provided by an "other" who is able to observe our practices and give us their perspective on how we're thriving and how we can improve. What happens when feedback becomes mechanical and perfunctory, though--when we give it because we know we have to, but neither the giver nor receiver expect it to mean much or are moved by the opportunities it implies? What happens in cases where those soliciting the feedback have power and want to gather the thoughts of those in the trenches, but no one ever sees the fruit of the feedback received? I call this the feedback loop to nowhere. People grow weary of even trying to share their thoughts in this scenario. They come to know that surveys and focus groups and evaluations, even, become a compliance function and don't really help to drive change. But to my absolute delight, I have been reminded recently but there is another way!

I think I've always tried to use feedback in authentic ways whenever I have requested it. However, I'm sure that I have been guilty of not truly honoring the voices I bring to any given table. I want to do better. I want kaizen to be my middle name! :-) and so, I'm writing this to share with you a recent experience where I got to see what it really looks like to close the feedback loop to nowhere.

Earlier in the year, I was given an assignment by my new boss in my new job: to create videos that could model tips, tools or strategies that our district's families could use to help their early literacy learners. No problem! Never mind the fact that I had never created such a product. I'm always up for learning! I went about the task of building the experience from the ground up. I recruited staff members from within our system to help create the content, working with them to decide on standards and areas of focus,. I started  learning script writing and co-created scripts with my colleagues. I set up filming sessions with our communications department , and have  served as the overall producer of the project. 

The first video team, which had planned  a kindergarten-focused video, had to withdraw from the project, so I stepped in and recorded myself with my  kindergarten son. I wrote the script, videotaped my introduction, and we filmed my son and me in action for the video's demo portion. Our videographer edited the footage into a nice-looking final product, complete with captions on screen, etc. We received favorable feedback from my supervisor and  colleagues who watched the final product. Although there were things about the video I wished I could have changed, I felt iffy about asking 

our videographer to make changes. I know how much work he had to have put in for the first version, after all! Then, it happened...

My supervisor is really good about getting the feedback of different stakeholders in any particular process in order to have a true sense of how end users would experience it. She suggested I solicit the thoughts of some of our parents who serve in a special district advisory capacity.  So I pulled together a small focus group of three of them--a recommended trio of very involved, education-savvy mothers. I expected to sit with them and hear their thoughts for how we might revisit our film footage and make tiny tweaks. But that is not what I got! By the time those ladies had finished, their very specific and insightful feedback had convinced me that I probably just needed to scrap the first video and start all over! Not at all the outcome I had expected, but it was the only reasonable thing to do given how compelling their feedback was and how it impacted me. And so, back to the drawing board we went.   

I added and rearranged parts of the script. I found a new book to feature in our video, and scheduled a re-filming of both my introduction and the demo with my son. To be honest, I was amazed that our videographer was game! (I will always give him props for that.) We filmed a brand new video.  On filming day, I emailed all of those focus group participants with lavish praise for their willingness to give me meaningful information about my work. I detailed all of the changes they had suggested and let them know what the response had been to each one--how I had used their feedback. 

I think in the end, we were all pleased with the return on investment for the time we spent together going over that initial video. It will no doubt reap dividends for our entire school district! But what if things had gone the way I'm used to seeing them go in spaces where we ask people for their feedback? What if we had simply gathered in that room and I had taken notes about what those ladies said, then put my notes on the shelf? What if I had never come back to them to inform them of how I'd used their feedback and convinced them that their time spent was worth it? What if I had been unwilling to make any changes to the video even though it wasn't the best it could be? I began to ask myself these questions and I realized that our process is something I haven't really seen modeled, but I think we should do more of. How powerful would it be if every time we ask someone for their feedback, they can trust that we really want to know and that we really are open to change? I'm not saying that every effort should go again to the drawing board and begin from scratch. We all know that would be wildly inefficient. But couldn't we do a better job as education systems and even as individual educators, honoring each other's thoughts and opinions through creating more meaningful feedback loops? 

I share this story not to toot my horn. I actually only stumbled upon that process and the learning it produced. But it was a powerful stumble, and I intend to keep learning from it and replicating that kind of approach. I encourage you to take whatever you can from this story to enhance your feedback loops, as well. There is something powerful to be said for being heard, and sadly, in education we need much more of it than we currently see. So if you know anyone who can benefit from this story, please share it. Together, we have the potential to change the face of feedback in our systems and beyond!

Cheers,

Letter to My Son

[Note:  This message will be a love note to not only my biological son, but to the "sons" I have nurtured in the classroom through the years as a village mama, and those I may never meet but who rely on folks like me to get our thinking together so we can help raise them into destiny...]

Dear Son,

This week I learned some amazing things--about you, about myself, about our society.  Your spring break was different from my school's, for the first time.  This, your kindergarten year, was our first to take you to the local science center's "school's out camp."  You had anxious thoughts about going, wondering whether kids would like you.  Worried because you didn't know anyone. Saying out loud every day how much you wished the place would close, so you wouldn't have to go.  Every morning, waking up first thing telling me you'd like not to go. So we talked. We prayed. I encouraged you.  But more than ever, I listened.  See, I had checked out a classic book from the library and had been learning.  How to Talk So Kids Will Listen in School had been speaking to me. I had actually only read a little bit of it! But what I had read had convinced me that somebody owes you--particularly you black children, particularly you black boy children--an apology.  This society owes you one for fostering an environment where black children were used as chattel, advertised as alligator bait and have generally been deemed a problem from the start.  But we still owe you, because generations after the horrors our forebears experienced, you still are owed a debt of childhood. Let me explain:

In the How to Talk... book, the authors write about how often it is that adults dismiss the real thoughts and feelings of children.  A child may express sadness, and instead of helping that child to voice, and then transcend, the feelings of the moment, we adults want to "help" the child to quickly get away from that feeling, and we try to help through verbal persuasion.  We'll tell you in nice terms not to feel what you feel--that it's not that bad, you'll get over it, here's why there are worse things...and on and on.  They suggest, though, that the most powerful thing we really should do is to let you feel, express and be in those feelings.   After we've heard you, actively listened and tried to draw out what your root struggle is, we can offer suggestions.  But not until we've heard.

I had to think on that. I have heard plenty of similar thoughts about how to be a good listener for adults--paraphrase, restate, listen actively, etc.  But for some reason, I have to admit, adults have not thus far seen it as very important to hear the thoughts of young people in the same way. Or maybe we have? In the general American population, I think we've been moving much more towards child-centeredness in terms of letting our children make choices and make decisions.  But honestly, that's not a phenomenon that some of us older-school thinkers have embraced.  We've seen how it's resulted often in spineless parents who feel powerless to ever assert themselves in their children's lives or be the boss.  And we see how that turns out in the end! More importantly, many of us as educators see how it practically plays out. We see those kids fail miserably at navigating school, and we want no parts of that parenting or teaching style.  But what you've taught me this week, son, is that it's not really about being at the extreme of child-centeredness or adult control.  It's all about the middle!

You see, parenting African American babies--and I use "babies" loosely, affectionately--is not for the faint of heart.  Historically, we have understood the very real dangers awaiting those who live in skin like yours--even children.  We knew in slavery and Jim Crow what could come of very innocent behaviors that your white peers are allowed.  So our goal was to protect you as much as possible from the sting of that.  We wanted to be the rough and tough ones in your life, kindly giving you balance and resistance so that it would not feel foreign or overtake you on the outside. This just is what it is, and there's a strong element of wisdom in it.  But some of what we continue to do, we do not because it has proven to serve us well; rather, we do it because it's all we know.  And one of the "all I knew" categories involves my way of listening to you. 

I decided this week that you deserve to be heard better, and that I would actively listen.  To be silenced does not help you process your emotions, any more than letting emotions rule helps you to be self-controlled.  You deserve the chance to be 6--to be nervous, scared, unsure.  You deserve to have my comforting words of affirmation and recognition of your feelings' validity.  You deserve my help processing challenges and  overcoming them. And why should kindness be an earned privilege?

And so, this week you've gotten a different mama.  A mama who is wanting to deliberately flout the traditional style of unintentional dismissal from adults.  A listener seeking to unsettle the practice in my community of encouraging kids like you to be silent.  Your silence services no one.   And so, my sonny, I've come closer to you this week.  Learned more about your psyche, and discovered that what calms you is my presentness, and sureness...and assurance that you are allowed to feel.  What a simple but revolutionary conclusion! Little black boy and little black girl, I start with me in encouraging you to do your best in life.  Do your best to be aware of who you are and to be as adept as possible at identifying where you stand emotionally, mentally and spiritually...and when you're not where you want to be or should be,  I commit to helping you be your best at recalibrating.  But for sure, I'm done with shutting down your experience You get permission to be whole human beings. It's the least we can give you...

Wordsmiths Rule the World?: A Look at the "Word Gap"

So, I had heard about this 30 million word gap between impoverished students and the most privileged ones. I totally understand how life experiences yield a discrepancy in expressive language skills...I see it every day. But 30 million words? Who knows that many? Are there even that many words  in the English language? The claim seemed dubious. However, I thought about other research saying that even controlling for income, African American children lag behind white children in academic achievement and vocabulary.  This got my attention, and I haven’t forgotten it. But three instances showed me that this thing is truly much more culturally based and subtle than I’d really realized.

Categorization

In scenario number one, I've signed my 4 year old for a study on the cognitive development of
toddlers. The job was to look at a computer screen and watch certain items, along wit categorizing
certain items.  This kid has both an amazing memory and quite a sophisticated vocabulary, so I
was amazed when he did not-so-well on a categories vocabulary task. Shown groups of pictures
and asked, for example, “Which one is fancy?”  he picked random answers.  Granted, he had said
several times that he seemed ready to move on from the whole activity, and his attention
span at that time caused me to wonder how much he was guessing.  Still, it was interesting to
think that there was a gap even in the vocabulary experiences of this very verbal household--
deliberately using particular adjectives to describe classes of items. Who knew you could get tested on that at 4?

Specificity

Scenario 2 found me in the doctor’s office with my 2 pre-schoolers.  The office fish tank never ceases

to be fascinating for them, and they watched the fish swim around next to a little Caucasian boy who

was with his mommy, as well.  As the boy and his mother discussed the fish, he offered, “That’s an

anemone--right, Mommy?” It had not occurred to me to call them anything beyond fish--Not because I

wasn't familiar with the particular name, but because in general I don't see lots of specificity as

necessary for items in which they have not taken a detailed interest.  In other words, it was enough

for me that they’re aware that they’re fishies--let’s talk about the size, the color, what you see them

doing...but I'm not so concerned that you know what kind they are. Yet hearing this little kid, who

had to be all of 3 years old, boldly proclaim the fish’s name, made me wonder if I was cheating my

children by not telling them that that this is an “anemone.”

Simplicity?

I was telling my school's custodian (an older African American man) about some things I was working
on with my son.  I shared with him that empathy was an area of focus. Among his other thoughts, Mr. D.
advised, “...And don’t be saying all them big words to him--empathy and all that--just tell him real simply what you want him to know.” I realized this as advice from the
black cultural canon--don’t get too complicated, too high-falutin', too much.   Hold off on the
“big words” right now, because your goal is understanding, not loftiness. My thought was that this
little mind could handle exactly that--a vocabulary word as part of the understanding.  
And as I thought on the private school that had accepted him for Pre-K, this is exactly what they
were doing--introducing young children to
these terms.   We’d come home with a rubber ducky emblazoned with this very word, in fact, from the
open house. So the age-old cultural wisdom from our community and the practices of the upper crust
kids we were exposing him to, were running counter to one another. Just one more subtle but
innocent expression of how the word gap could come into play.  It’s not about not having the words,
but about the cultural definitions of when these words are necessary to know and what purpose they
fulfill.

Really, this is fascinating stuff to tease out, because being aware of these subtleties and finding a place
to deliberately land will definitely affect the outcomes for my children and how they are perceived in the
world. It is about values and focus as much as about vocabulary.  Words, after all, are our expression of
how we live life.

Story Power

Talk is King

There is a slew of professional literature out there about the power of oral language in building students' ability to tell stories, to see themselves as conveyors of important messages, etc. I'm here for it! I think back to me as a young storyteller and how important it was to me that my verbal free flow poured into my writing of stories and little books.  I also just believe it makes sense.  If we can think it, we can say it, and if we can say it, we can write it...and then of course, if we can write it, we can read it!  The reciprocity among listening, speaking, reading and writing is amazing.  

What I didn't realize...

until recently is that there are toys out there that facilitate the development of these skills.  One day I happened upon this toy at my local Once Upon a Child, so I picked it up. 

The Thinkativity Little Storyteller

My son had been telling stories at nighttime with Daddy, complete with "Once upon a time...", transitional words and "the end." I was impressed that something as simple as introducing him to story structure would stick in his little mind.  I started to tell stories with him as well, and when I saw this toy, it just made sense to kind of ride the wave he was on.  (My daughter was taking it on, as well.) That was about 6 months ago, and they liked the toy.  Fast forward to yesterday, when I could see them begin to not just enjoy the toy, but understand it more. 

The way it works is...

each of those rollers has different story components on them that can be interchanged:  different beginnings, with characters and scenarios.  Whatever story is picked, the toy reads straight across a line, left to right, and picks up on the next line to continue.  The last line concludes the story. The story changes as the child turns the rollers to change elements. It even has a bit of drama in the reading, as well--sound effects of wind, music to dramatize a particular sentence...so it sounds like a dramatic interpretation of a real story.  Yesterday I watched my kids play with this game in a new way, taking time to dramatize each piece themselves.  So, when the story read, "...exhausted, he settled down for a nap," they would act it out.  This level of participatory storytelling play has lots of benefits, as I see it...not only for their general communication skills, but their knowledge of story in particular. 

Do you see the potential for this kind of toy?  If we can get our pre-schoolers really comfortable with oral storytelling, ala writing workshop, augmented by play experiences like this, how powerfully ready to write would they be in kindergarten!?  There is great opportunity there.  This particular toy is not easy to find, even on the resale market, but it's out there.    

There are other toys that I think can foster some of this same creative story awareness.  I am listing some of them below. 

Thinkativity Soar & Explore Storyteller

This, too, appears to be largely unavailable, though I did find it on eBay.  It works like the toy above, but lets kids play with scenarios involving different cultures and languages.  Haven't experienced this one, but about to order one.

Animal Storytelling Finger Puppets

These look cool for keeping setting and overall story meaning in mind as kids take on roles of different characters.  Again, haven't tried these--just doing some research on more toys that serve as storytelling aids.

Storyteller Writing Box

This would be great for not only younger kids, but older ones, as well.  They could take part in storytelling together, or older ones could model for younger.  This can ignite the centuries-old but lost tradition of storytelling in families! (Before our iPads and TVs, intergenerational storytelling kept families connected, entertained and engaged, all while boosting children's vocabulary and knowledge of the world outside of home!)

Truly, the power of story can't be overestimated...

Whether 9 months or 99, if we are human, story has a pull that can power us forward.  Teaching our children to love and flow in storytelling has the potential to do at least 10 things I can think of:

• overpower the influence of their tech tools--who can replace human interaction?
• teach our children to see the "story" in everyday life
• make writing a story down feel like the next natural progression
• attune our kids to the decisions and strategies of authors whose stories they hear or read
• prepare our students to be compelling in conversation--even as youngsters
• set them up for success in other creative areas--songwriting and coding, to name a few
• give them confidence in using transitional language that makes their communication clear
• take away the fear factor speaking in front of people & attune them to the importance of audience
• prepare them to answer comprehension questions in school about sequence, theme and main idea
• give them a leg up for leadership influence in corporate, educational and other settings as adults (See book Tell to Win by Peter Guber.)

Let's give our children this amazing gift, early!
Yours in the telling,