Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory

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on common sense and well-established practices. For example, in chapter 2, we discuss the traits of a brain-friendly learning environment. The idea that brains learn best in a safe classroom environment is neither new nor earth-shattering. We dig deeply into the topic, however, to explain that a safe learning environment requires more than order; it also must offer students clear goals for learning outcomes, specific techniques for demonstrating mastery, and the freedom to try, make mistakes, and try again. Students sitting quietly in orderly rows rarely demonstrate the high level of engagement that promotes effective learning. Yet, we find many teachers who view a safe and orderly classroom as just that—a place where students demonstrate passive compliance. Knowing that a safe and orderly classroom is critical to effective core instruction is not the point of chapter 2. Rather, the more important question is, Are all the elements of this characteristic of good teaching present in your classroom? Even when you find they are, there is still benefit in the material—it will validate your teaching and build self-efficacy that you are on the right track.

      image “That’s a nice idea, but it won’t work for the students at my school.” This response is common, especially among educators who teach a majority of at-risk youth. We also hear numerous justifications, such as “My students can’t handle cooperative learning” or “My students lack the basic academic skills and self-control to do that.” However, that pessimism is unfounded. The research behind our recommendations demonstrates that the educational approach we outline in this book is proven to work for all students, regardless of ethnicity, economic status, home language, or gender. Schools of every demographic makeup are successfully implementing these methods. In the end, our experience also has demonstrated that students will become whatever teachers believe them to be. If educators believe students are immature, irresponsible, and incapable of demonstrating scholarly, responsible behavior, eventually they’ll be right. They will treat students as such and, as a result, create classroom rules and procedures to support their assumptions. But if educators believe students are capable of working collaboratively, demonstrating intellectual curiosity, making good choices, and self-directing their learning—and they apply the effective teaching methods necessary to promote such behaviors—they, again, will be right in their beliefs. Instead of questioning whether students are capable of achieving successful outcomes, therefore, the ideas we present in this book ask educators to consider another question: How can we help students get to those successful outcomes?

      image “These are great ideas, but I don’t have the time to implement them because I have too much content to cover.” This is the most common concern we hear. As we discuss in chapter 4, there is an impossible amount of yearly state curriculum. However, if a school is committed to effective teaching and student learning, there is no research to support the proposition that the more content a teacher covers, the more students learn. In reality the opposite is true—the less curriculum taught to mastery, the more students achieve. There is probably not a teacher in the United States who can honestly say that he or she is currently covering all mandated material within the time constraints of the school year. It is unacceptable to deny students effective teaching in a misguided attempt to maintain the illusion that the school is covering the entire required curriculum.

      Keeping these important cautions in mind, we offer a book full of proven strategies—tools that can help teachers differentiate instruction, provide engaging ways for students to learn, increase the chances for success, and avoid the need for additional intervention. Join us on a journey of continuous teacher improvement. We hope educators will use these strategies to enhance their repertoire and provide more good teaching to more students more of the time!

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       Shifting to Collaborative Core Instruction

      Teaching matters! At a time in which successfully navigating our K–12 system of education is a mandatory prerequisite to leading a successful adult life, the greatest contributor to student success is the quality of instruction students receive each school day. Almost four decades of research into the characteristics of effective schools, such as that from Ron Edmonds (1979) and Larry Lezotte (1991), has proven that virtually all students can learn when provided with effective teaching. In his seminal work What Works in Schools, Robert Marzano (2003) demonstrates that highly effective schools produce results that almost entirely overcome the effects of student background. Additionally, Hattie’s (2009) comprehensive study of what most impacts student learning finds that education’s powerful leverage points hinge on features within the school, rather than outside factors like home, environmental, and economic conditions.

      Teaching is also our job—the business of our career, the goal of our professional training, the criteria of our credentialing and evaluation process, the fundamental work of any school, and the very reason why most campus professionals are hired. While an unprecedented number of societal responsibilities are being thrust on educators today, one fact is undeniable: it is their responsibility to teach students the academic knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to succeed as adults.

      Fortunately, teaching also represents the area over which educators have the greatest level of direct control. While schools must work within federal, state, and local regulations and contractual agreements, many teachers have significant autonomy every school day to determine the scope and sequence of their daily lesson plans, instructional practices, assessment decisions, and classroom procedures. The law considers teachers in loco parentis—in place of a parent—in the classroom. In most educational decisions, teachers have much greater authority than parents. Considering that the average student will spend seven years in elementary school, educators have both an incredible opportunity and an awesome responsibility to directly impact a student’s success in school and beyond.

      Without question, more students will succeed in school if educators successfully fulfill their fundamental purpose. But how can we ensure that every student receives effective teaching every day? In this chapter, we examine how many of the state and national reform efforts have proven to be counterproductive to this goal.

      The idea that better teaching improves student achievement is not new to education. Since the adoption of No Child Left Behind in 2001, myriad school-reform mandates have launched to improve teaching. Unfortunately, most efforts were doomed to fail because they advocated low-leverage practices—practices that have a limited impact on actual student learning.

      To determine if a teaching practice has a high- or low-leverage effect on student learning, we look at the effect size, or a standardized measure of the strength of an intervention. Effect sizes above 0.40 are good, and the higher the better (Hattie, 2009). We recommend using a baseline of 0.40 standard deviation growth in student learning within a school year (Hattie, 2009). In his research, Hattie (2009) finds that the average student’s academic achievement will increase yearly by 0.10 standard deviations with no instruction at all, merely as a result of the student’s life experiences throughout the year. Hattie also finds that if that average student is randomly assigned a teacher for a particular grade or course, and if the teacher possesses an average level of teaching competence, the student’s academic achievement will increase by 0.30 standard deviations. Combine the two factors, and the average student will improve in learning by 0.40 deviations per year, simply by living a year and regularly attending the average school.

      Hattie’s (2009) point is that if a school can achieve an average rate of 0.40 standard deviations in learning growth for students by doing nothing exceptional, it must specifically seek out practices proven to have a higher impact rate in order to intentionally improve student learning. Using this typical effect rate as our scale to judge good teaching, let’s assess the most prevalent

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