September 28 - October 2

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher Character Students of the Week

All 6 of these students displayed positive character behaviors within our 8 focused traits:  

Be... responsible, respectful, kind, safe, honest, loyal, compassionate, courageous.  

Students:  Left to Right: Megan Vos (Diamond), Al Jost (Onxy), Fred Gauger (Elective), Jack Shenkenberg (Silver), Skyler Danielson (Hive), Trevor Burk (Karcher Character Buck).

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Kudos

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• Ellen Murphy was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Ellen and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits.  Ellen, please come to the main office to receive your prize!
• Thank you Mike Jones for your willingness to assist others through MAP testing issues this past week.  Your knowledge and willingness with the program is appreciated by everyone!
• Rosanne Hahn had a parent approach her regarding a teacher that touched their student's life and has changed their son for the better.  Their son has graduated now and is on a great path and the family feels they owe a large portion of that change to Kurt Rummler.  You never know who or when you are making an impact on our students lives... it is during these moments that remind us all about why we are in education.  Great story Kurt. 

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Reminders

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• This week is the start of our Flexischedule for Thursday and Friday.  Teachers worked on their schedules during in-service and we should be able to hit the ground running come Thursday.  Please assist our students with understanding the changes to iTime as we progress through the week.  
• This weeks PLC will focus on the PLC Standards Data Collection document shared with the teachers on Friday.  Please make sure you share your copied document with Matt and myself by the end of the day on Wednesday.  
• Lunch with the superintendent will be this Wednesday, September 30th at Karcher.  Peter Smet will be in the building during lunch along with some board members.  Anyone is welcome to join them in the cafeteria during their time at Karcher.
• 7th grade reward day will be THIS Thursday during lunch and 8th grade reward day will be THIS Friday during lunch.  Students who have earned enough KCBs will have the ability to purchase items after the first ten minutes of lunch.  Matt Behringer will be getting more details to staff throughout the week.  
• The 7th grade class will be going on a field trip to the school forest on Friday, October 2nd.  
• The homecoming game is this Friday night at 7:00.  Students and staff are encourage to wear orange and black to school on Friday to support the Burlington Demons!
• Here is a list of email addresses everyone can use to assist with emails being sent to the correct/necessary people.
• kmsteachers@basd.k12.wi.us  (teachers, counselors, admin)
• kmsaides@basd.k12.wi.us  (all special education aides)
• kmsblt@basd.k12.wi.us  (BLT team and admin)
• kmsspedstaff@basd.k12.wi.us  (sp. ed., Erika Fons, & Stephanie Schmidt)
• diamondadvisory@basd.k12.wi.us  (next four - advisory teams)
• hiveadvisory@basd.k12.wi.us
• onyxadvisory@basd.k12.wi.us
• silveradvisory@basd.k12.wi.us
• Music Meeting on October 5th for all choir, orchestra, and band students.
• 8th graders will meet during 1st hour.
• 7th graders will meet during 2nd hour.
• Rosters of who should be attending will be sent by Rod and Nick.

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Pictures from the week

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Mr. Buendia's 8th grade band class - students take turns getting to conduct the warm-up.

Ms.  Jorgenson's English class (next 4 pictures).  Students reading together using the SQIDVPAC comprehension strategy - connections.  

The tool/instructional strategy to assist students with their connections was:  the text, post-it parking lot, and annotation marks.

 Jack Schmidt's social studies class doing a simulation.

Article of the week:

The Seven Habits of Highly Affective Teachers

Rick Wormeli

Want to make your school a better place for everyone? Make emotional health a habit.

Anxious, overconfident, curious, indifferent, angry, amused, lonely, hopeful, embarrassed, empowered, afraid, excited, diminished—teachers have seen all these emotions emerge from students as they engage with classroom content. Emotional responses to lessons often go through students' minds before they even begin to think about the material: This stuff is stupid/awesome/beyond me. I'm not comfortable with this. Finally, something I'm good at. Maybe somebody will notice I can't read. Let's see her find a mistake in that one—it's perfect. Does the teacher know I didn't study this last night?

Some of us deny this reality and claim we aren't trained to guide children's emotional health. We think our purpose is to teach content and skills only, not to deal with the touchy-feely stuff. This attitude turns a blind eye to the developmental nature of the students we serve, and it runs afoul of how minds learn. Unless we're the most severe of sociopaths, we all have emotional responses that affect what we do.

Adding to the messiness, our individual perspectives and experiences may put us out of sync with others' emotional states, even as the institutional nature of schools demands emotional synchronicity. The resulting miscommunication, blame, anxiety, and frustration are not the best ingredients for a good day at school.

Teachers who deny the emotional elements of teaching and learning can become exhausted from ceaseless confrontations with students' emotional states, often blaming their personal stress and students' failure to learn on students' lack of motivation or maturity. They grow disconnected from students, creating an almost adversarial relationship with them: I need to get them to shape up. It's them or me. These students are hopeless; why should I bother? It's the parents who created this situation. This attitude can bleed into daily interactions with students and colleagues.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can develop constructive responses to our own affective needs as teachers and equip our students to do the same. These responses take mindfulness and practice to become daily habits. Borrowing and modifying the premise from Stephen Covey (1989), let's explore the seven habits of highly affective teachers.

1. Find joy in others' success.

Climbing the mountain ourselves and resting at the top while others struggle below isn't the goal; getting everyone to the top is. Our choice to become teachers is reaffirmed with every student's success. Do we experience genuine joy in our students' intellectual milestones? Do we let students see our encouraging smile and rising respect for their work? Or do we interrupt a student's clumsy attempt at a classroom demonstration and just do the task ourselves because it's easier?

We don't just present curriculum and document whether students sink or swim with it; we put skin in the game. We take a personal stake in Gabriella's use of proper dance technique and don't see it as a sacrifice to work with her a couple of times a week before or after school. It isn't an imposition to recommend an online tutorial to Cristian when he requests our input as he studies for an advanced test. We whisper a triumphant, "Yes!" when Carl finally contributes substantively to a class discussion. We get a little misty-eyed when Larrinda's team places first in the robotics competition, knowing how hard they worked, how much they learned, and how happy their families will be.

2. Cultivate perspective and reframe.

Perspective is often the difference between empowering optimism and defeatist isolation. When a student is disrespectful to us, instead of taking it personally, we realize that he's 14 and has only an occasional filter on impulse control. We focus on the positive young adult he's becoming and help him see how his words and actions have consequences, guiding him in making amends and restoring trust, with tomorrow as a fresh start.

A change in perspective can also help us deal with daily challenges. When parents complain about our assignments, we can reframe the problem this way: How can I communicate more clearly and in a timely manner so parents aren't frustrated, and how can I get an honest sense of how assignments are impacting students' home life? Instead of whining about students' distractibility in class, we can seek ways to make our lessons developmentally responsive and meaningful so students are engaged. Hall duty between classes isn't such a hardship when we realize it's an opportunity to connect with students outside class.

Think about whether it's better to be right or to be kind in our interactions with students and colleagues. Sometimes our students need a win more than they need a correction, so we might be kind today and right tomorrow. Perspective provides hope where there is little, and it helps us commit to the long haul. Teachers who have seen formerly frustrating students come back to visit as successful adults trust in the whole enterprise of schooling and growing up. Setbacks are momentary flashes of concern, not dictates of a locked-in future.

3. Ditch the easy caricature.

Ever since the days of hunters and gatherers, humans have been known for categorizing, much of it for survival. This is still true today: Will this person hurt me or defend me? Is this person going to require a lot or a little of my energy and time? Do I belong in this group or in that other one? We pigeonhole others: Eudora is the contrarian, Dave wears rose-colored glasses, Hassan is deep and philosophical, Steve is a sycophant, and Liz always has to see the numbers. We make these categorizations daily, and they affect our interactions with others.

When we see people as fully developed thinkers, they become more to us than our quick categorization reveals. They have value. As a result, we are less likely to dismiss their ideas as not worth considering or to assume nefarious intent on their part. When we visit students' homes and make other efforts to really understand who they are beyond the classroom, they become someone's son, daughter, brother, sister, mentor, surrogate parent, or inspiration. When we see them play in a soccer game, swim competitively, program computers, paint with finesse, perform in a concert, celebrate a religious milestone, or get a new scout badge, we see their extended effort and intellectual fortitude.

When a student becomes more to us than the class clown, mean girl, drama queen, geek, or jock, it is easier to remember that each student matters and is worth our time. They are not just one more paper to grade. We think of them specifically as we plan our lessons, and we look forward to watching them progress. Time in their company is time well spent.

4. Explore the ethics of teaching.

We know that massive packets of worksheets don't teach, that oral dictation spelling tests are not tests of spelling, and that lectures with no opportunities to process content are ineffective—yet we rarely confront these practices in ourselves or others. Are we open to critique, or do colleagues see us as set in our ways? And what goes unlearned among our students when we play it politically safe?

Candor is hard, but when offered constructively and in a culture where it is safe to hold different opinions from those of our colleagues, it's invigorating. When we open up our practices to the scrutiny of respected colleagues and analyze the merits of our decisions, we may find our strategies lacking, but wrestling with practice like this breathes new life into our work. And we may find our practices validated by others, which creates camaraderie. An unexamined pedagogy can hinder learning, but an examined pedagogy empowers learning and gives our students the classrooms they need.

To what degree do we allow people untrained in teaching to tell us what to do? For example, educators often agree that percentage grades distort the accuracy of grade reports and should be abandoned (Guskey, 2013), but many districts keep them because parents want them. Some teachers count homework as 50 percent of the report card grade, even though we know how much this skews our reports of student performance against standards. Do we say something and change the practice? If we do nothing, we are effectively agreeing to distort the grade report.

Discover the energy that comes with candid exploration of ethical issues. Consider how your handling of issues like these may affect your students' well-being:

• An English language learner knows the content but cannot express his expertise because he has language limitations. Should he be allowed to take the test in his native language?
• A student is late with a project. Should her grade on the project be lowered? Or do we give her one grade on timely attention to deadlines and a different grade on how well her project meets academic standards?
• You want to honor diverse opinion and community values, but you teach life science and evolution in a community where a significant number of families are creationists or believe in intelligent design. How do you proceed?

5. Embrace humility.

To accept a new idea, we have to first admit that what we're doing is less effective than we thought. This can be tough because, for many of us, the way we teach defines much of who we are as individuals. If someone critiques our teaching, it feels like they're critiquing us. In humility, however, we grow comfortable with the idea that we may be wrong. One of the signs of an intellectual is the willingness to revise one's thinking. As modern educators, we are intellectuals, and hence open to revision.

Doubt can be our greatest compass rose, providing direction when needed: My colleague posed a provocative question about that strategy I use, but I dismissed it as having no merit—Have I grown complacent? Could there be another interpretation of that classic text that's just as correct as mine? If I ask for assistance with this student, will the administration think less of me?

Let's invite administrators, parents, and students to evaluate us at any time. Let's let students and parents complete report cards on us, ones that they design but that we augment to include elements about which we'd like feedback. We might even want to share, discuss, and respond to this feedback publicly to show our willingness to learn.

6. Value intellect.

Teaching the same age group the same topics five periods a day year after year without intellectual stimulation breeds complacency. It's easier to pull out last year's lesson sequence and go through the motions than it is to breathe new life into the unit and respond to the unique nature of the individuals before us. This problem has existed for ages, as an 1895 report attests:

The deadening influence of routine in teaching is well known; … Said a college professor, "What can be more deadening to all intellectual interest than to read year after year the same classic author with the successive classes of students? I plead for a frequent change of authors." … No teacher can afford to dispense with good scholarship; for without it he fails in his chief desire, which is to be of the highest service to his pupils …. A good test of the intellectual condition of the schools is to take an account of the studies the teachers are carrying on for themselves. (Seaver, 1895, pp. 21–22)

Teacher Diana Senechal writes on her blog (2013),

Teachers need room for their own lives and interests, even if they devote most of their time to school. Schools and policymakers should recognize that those outside pursuits enrich lives and translate into better teaching. … Teachers and students thrive in relation to substantial, beautiful, meaningful subject matter.

A well-nurtured intellect ignites us, deepening our passion for the field. Let's build that intellect. Here are just a few ideas to get you started (for more, see Wormeli, 2013, 2014):

• Start or participate in an Edcamp. To find an Edcamp near you, visit http://edcamp.wikispaces.com.
• Write for education publications. Analyzing and explaining what you do can clarify and transform your thinking.
• Reconsider unit sequences. Should a later unit be taught earlier, or can you move through all the topics historically, rather than treating them as disconnected units?
• Reflect on how you're different than you were 10 years ago and where you'll be 10 years from now. Identify decisions you've made to get to where you are today and what you still need to do to achieve your current goals.
• Write a personal grading philosophy statement listing all your grading policies and a rationale for each one.

As you grow through these experiences, think about how you can use your learning to encourage and spark greater learning in your students.

7. Maintain passion and playfulness.

Having fun with your subject and your students will give students permission to engage, even invest, in their learning, and it will elevate your spirits. There's so much stress involved in teaching today's students; moments of true passion and playfulness bring back much-needed humanity.

Save your sanity, then, by incorporating students' names into your test questions and their community culture into their projects. Use props in lessons, take on the manner of a different character from time to time as you teach, and add something startling to two of your lessons this week.

Invite a colleague to burst into your class at a specific time and blurt something related to the lesson then leave quickly as you respond to the commotion with, "That was bizarre, but by good fortune, we can use the information!" Put a mysterious box in the middle of the room with yellow police tape around it and a sign that says, "Warning: Open one week from today, only in the presence of an adult." Activities like these build a sense of wonder and curiosity in students.

Show students you don't take yourself too seriously by daring them to find a mistake in your lessons. Insert random humorous slides into your media and lesson presentations, and embrace non sequiturs from students and yourself. Let students step into your shoes by teaching a portion of a lesson (perhaps using a family-friendly puppet you have on hand). Or have a student emcee a unit review game while you take a seat as a contestant.

Speak with just as much enthusiasm about your topic during 7th period as you did in 1st period—after all, it's your students' first time hearing this lesson. Find ways to turn seemingly boring material into a great romance or heroic drama. Get manipulatives into students' hands, and ask them to build physical models of abstract and intangible things (justice, algebra, metaphor, or genetics).

Ask students to think creatively by ranking a cantaloupe, a beach ball, a suitcase, and a copy of the Magna Carta in order of importance to one of the characters in a book. Or have them compose a dialog between two punctuation marks about who's more important. Make learning fun for yourself and your students whenever you can.

And One Bonus Habit

All these habits together create a feeling of emotional wellness, but they are habits, not incidents. Like muscles that atrophy in disuse, these habits have to be used frequently to achieve emotional health benefits.

Fortunately, as we practice these seven habits, we discover an eighth habit, perhaps the most important: Self-renew. We need to consider which elements are ineffective and need to be dropped from our practice, what we need to change, and how to generate hope for today's students and our profession. Taking this time to renew whenever we can will enable us to move forward in positive ways.

Stephen Covey declared that our character is the composite of our habits. Let us then compose virtuous affective habits that will ensure the success of the next generation.

References

Covey, S. (1989). The seven habits of highly effective people. New York: Free Press.

Guskey, T. H. (2013). The case against percentage grades. Educational Leadership, 71(1), 68–72.

Seaver, E. P. (1895). Eighteenth annual report of the superintendent of public schools of the City of Boston (School Document no. 3). Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers.

Senechal, D. (2013, November 15). Turning our attention toward interesting things [blog post]. Retrieved from Diana Senechal: On Education and Other Things at http://dianasenechal.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/turning-our-attention-toward-interesting-things

Wormeli, R. (2013). Take time for yourself—and for learning. Educational Leadership, 70(9), 14–19.

Wormeli, R. (2014). Teacher coach: Teachers' intellectual lives. AMLE Magazine, 1(9), 39–40.

Calendar for: October

September 21-25th

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher Character Students of the Week

All 6 of these students displayed positive character behaviors within our 8 focused traits:  

Be... responsible, respectful, kind, safe, honest, loyal, compassionate, courageous.  

Student's of the week for September 14th - September 18th

Left to right:   Grace Geyso (Silver), Irie Alderman (Hive), Drake Brandon (Diamond), Evan Richmond (Onyx), Christian Brenner (Applied Academics), and

Zack Olstinske (Karcher Character Bucks).

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Kudos

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• Wendy Zeman was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Wendy and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits. 
• Great job Jack Schmidt, Patti Tenhagen, and Alyssa Riggs for the organization of "The Karcher Way" last three weeks and for "The Karcher Way" Day!  Friday was a proud moment for me to have the chance to be in the presents of such a community building event for Karcher.  The feeling of community really came through on Friday.  Such an important cultural need for all the students to feel they are part of something bigger than themselves.  Nice job to everyone involved.  And nice job helping students focus on what matters... character education :)
• Thank you Steve Berezowitz for being the grill master on Friday.
• Donna Sturdevant for organizing "Wear red for Welles".  What a great turn out on Friday!

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Reminders

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• BLT Meeting Monday, September 21st room 126 @ 2:40
• PLC Wednesday, September 23rd - Library - Reviewing/Setting PLC Norms
• All day in-service Friday, September 25th from 8:00 to 4:00 - starting in the library
• iTime conversation/explanation
• Google Classroom
• PLCs
• SLOs
• Tornado Drill will be occurring on Monday, September 21st.  
• Parent-Teacher Conferences - October 12th from 4:00 to 7:00
• Field Study - UW-Whitewater - if you have interest in helping future teachers let me know and I will get you in contact with Whitewater.  
• The PRA architects will be in the building tomorrow, Monday, September 21st starting at 8:00am.  They will be touring every building in the district as part of our Long Range Strategic Planning.  

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Pictures from the week

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Ms. Geyso's English class.

Students doing the low ropes course at Camp MacLean.

The following pictures are from "The Karcher Way" Day!!!  Great Day :)

Article of the week:

Show Us What Homework's For

Kathleen Cushman

Students sound off on why homework doesn't work—and how that might change.

Kids spend many of their after-school hours doing what cognitive scientists call deliberate practice in areas like the arts, athletics, and hobbies. So when I set out recently to gather students' perspectives on homework—for a What Kids Can Do project in which youth explored how they develop motivation and mastery— I first asked the teenagers to describe their nonacademic practice activities.

For instance, Jacob, who plays in a basketball league, told me that every time he finishes a game, he makes notes on his mistakes and asks friends where he needs improvement:

Then, when I'm alone, I practice by myself. If I'm bad at free throws, I take 50 free throws. If I'm bad at three-pointers, I take a lot of three-pointers. My stamina is not that good, so I push myself by running in the park every day.

Ideally, kids told me, their homework should serve the same function, targeting areas of weakness and pushing them to reach a new place just within their capability. But when students and I applied their criteria for deliberate practice to homework assignments, homework typically fell short. Deliberate practice has an express purpose and is tailored to the individual; yet too often, students said, teachers issued the same homework to all without making its purpose clear. Deliberate practice involves attention, and any repetition requires focus. Yet students reported that they could do much of their homework without thinking, repeating things by rote without knowing what they meant. Good practice leads to new skills, but kids said that when they finished their homework, they seldom applied any of the requested information.

What would it take to make homework into the kind of deliberate practice that strengthens academic skills and knowledge? For that to happen, the kids and I agreed, students would need to start to think of homework as "getting good" at something—and teachers would need to welcome students' feedback on what best supports their developing mastery. My informants shared suggestions for how homework practices should change.

What's the Purpose?

These students often did not know the point of their homework, which lowered their motivation to do it:

We need homework that is important, that helps us toward a goal we have to meet. The homework that's given can seem random, like a non sequitur—it has nothing to do with anything. —Claude

Students resented busywork. As Bridget complained, "A lot of these drills are intended to keep kids focused on something and to keep them out of trouble." Kristian objected when her sign language teacher made students copy material from a book on sign language etiquette: "The repetition wasn't helping me use sign language better. If you really want me to learn it, ask me to practice it with someone in real life."

Above all, students believed homework should match skills they needed to work on individually. As Vivian said,

I need help with atomic radius in chemistry, and another girl has a problem with some other topic. But the teacher doesn't know our weaknesses and what we're good at. We all learn at different paces, and in different ways, so [teachers should focus] on what we need to learn and how the homework is going to help us.

Students believed one assignment could address many different students' needs if the assignment allowed learning in a variety of ways. Claude held up a multipart project his English teacher designed as a good example:

You can choose an essay, or you can do a poem. And for one part, you do an artistic representation of what you wrote. With more options and more choices, it might open up learning, and wanting to do things, to all students, not just a specific group.

Follow Up!

Students wanted teacher feedback on assignments. When a teacher did not follow up on homework, they felt they were left hanging. Vivian lamented, "The next day, some teachers barely look at it. You worked so hard to get it done, and they just look and say, 'Oh you did it, fine.'" Without feedback, homework did not seem like deliberate practice:

I really want the teacher to evaluate it, so I can know what I'm doing wrong. From there, she can go over what we need, and maybe create another homework assignment to explore something that we didn't get. —Kristian

Unless a teacher intervened, practicing something wrong could be worse than making no effort at all:

Until you understand what you're doing wrong [in a homework assignment] and how you can change it, you're just going to continually do it wrong and think that you're doing it right. —Christina

Ideally, teacher and students would share the responsibility of identifying what skills need improvement and making improvement happen through the right kind of practice, as Nicholas's math teacher did. "We investigate the [homework] problems we did as a class, and try to figure out how to get through them," Nicholas explained. "You know why you got the problems wrong. You know what to do about it next time."

No Grading

Evaluating homework for diagnostic purposes makes a lot of sense, these teenagers agreed, but grading homework defeats its learning purpose. It isn't fair to make learners worry about getting a low grade on a task they're attempting for the first time.

It feels like teachers are contradicting themselves when they take off points because you get a homework answer wrong. They're saying: "Stay up, do my homework, and then come back with it all right." That's not practice, that's more like a test that comes at the wrong time! —Nicholas

Even worse, students perceived that grading homework fosters dishonest or cynical behavior from both teachers and students:

Some homework is just busywork, to give us more grades. The end of the quarter comes and teachers say, "I don't really have enough grades to put in, so I need you guys to do this worksheet." —Aaron

It took me five hours to do this really difficult math homework, and I still didn't understand it, but I was trying my best. Another girl copied it off the Internet— she got 100, and I got a 39. If I ask her, she doesn't understand it. But the teacher doesn't care—she's looking to see if you got it right or wrong. —Vivian

Students like Erika appreciated teachers who supported risk taking in homework:

My teacher would give us a worksheet for homework, but he didn't count answers wrong. He gave you credit for trying. I was more willing to try, because I knew that if I got it wrong, he was going to take time to make sure that I understood it.

Many students got more out of academic practice when they collaborated with others. Small groups might work together on assignments, Aaron suggested, focusing on what each student needed most. "It could either be the people that are bad at one thing all grouped together, or people from varying levels in one group, like if I'm good at pronunciation and someone else was really good at conjugating," he recommended. But arranging a time and space for group homework often proved nearly impossible for students with different commitments and far-flung home locations. Many interviewees said that rather than judging individual homework, schools should devise ways to help kids get the practice they needed, such as an academic support period during the day.

Better Use of Time

Kids recognized they needed to do a certain amount of practice that wasn't enjoyable, but they didn't think they learned much when they were exhausted from too much work. Faced with an overload, students like Vivian made nightly choices about which homework to rush through or put aside completely:

I get home from soccer practice at 7:00, and I really don't feel like doing all that homework. I'm like, "OK, what's more important, math or history?". . . When I'm doing math homework, I go fast and crazy, and in the end I still don't understand it.

"It's better to understand what you're doing than to get the homework done," agreed Claude. By assigning less homework, but gearing it toward deeper understanding, he proposed, teachers and students could have it both ways:

The "Four Rs"

Ideally, these teens agreed, engaging in additional work after a lesson would be like practicing a sport or a musical instrument. Homework wouldn't ask them to try something they weren't ready for—after all, if they practiced wrong at the start, bad habits could take a long time to undo. Instead, it would add value to lessons through what we decided to call the "four Rs" of deliberate practice: readiness, repetition, review, and revision. Students shared examples of homework that hit one of these Rs.

To get students ready for a class discussion, for instance, Jacob's English teacher asked students to read a poem carefully:

When we first read it, many people didn't even know what the poem was about. It was so complicated. But we practiced [at home] breaking it down, stanza by stanza, and then in class it all came together. We looked deep into the meaning of each stanza, and that way people started understanding it.

Just repeating something did not automatically strengthen crucial learning, students said. They also had to pay attention to what they were repeating, and how. Like hitting a tennis ball again and again over the net, effective homework asked students to practice new skills and knowledge as problems came at them in different ways:

My economics teacher gave us worksheets every night. I did the graphs so many times, I know them backwards and forwards. With some subjects, you need the repetition to really understand it, to be able to do it any which way. —Bridget

Students often had the hardest time engaging when teachers asked them to learn information by heart. Memorization was easier, they said, if they could connect material to something meaningful to them. When Christian had to identify paintings for an art history test, he imagined the paintbrush in his own hand:

I try to place myself in the period. [I ask myself] "What's the typical thing I would see in the Renaissance time?" I'll see the lineup of the figures, the little things a person would know in that period. I start thinking of paintings I could have done.

Even while learning new skills, students realized, they also had to keep practicing skills they had learned before. Christina compared meaningful homework to warm-ups in dance:

Every day, we do the same things at the barre that we've been doing since we were little. Even when you're getting better as a dancer, you still have to keep up that practice. Otherwise it's easy to get lazy about little things, and you can mess up how the dance looks.

Through out-of-school activities they cared about, students already had experience revising their work. If something wasn't coming out right in a knitting or building project, they were used to going back and trying again. When her teacher made the class revise an essay, Christina said, she thought of it in the same way:

When I write, I tend to throw in every single little detail that I possibly can. All my essays have so many run-on sentences and sentences that don't even make sense! So I go back [and tell myself] "Maybe I can change this up so it's more relevant to what I'm supposed to be writing about."

Toward Homework Students Want to Do

The teenagers I interviewed understood the need for sustained practice at the heart of the homework enterprise. And they had creative suggestions about how assignments could be redesigned. Figure 1 (p. 77) presents six student-generated ideas for alternatives to traditional homework.

Figure 1. Students Suggest Homework Alternatives

In This Learning Situation. . .	Instead of This	Try This
You introduced new material in class.	Assigning a question set so we will remember the material.	Ask us to think up a homework task that follows up on this material and to explain our choices.
You want us to read an article before a class discussion.	Making us answer questions that prove we read it.	Ask us to write down two or three questions wehave after reading the article.
You want to see whether we understand a key concept (such as literary irony).	Making us complete a worksheet.	Ask us to demonstrate the concept for the class in small groups, using any medium.
You want us to see how a math procedure applies in various situations.	Assigning 10 word problems that involve this procedure.	Ask small groups to choose one word problem that applies this procedure in a real-world situation, solve it, and present it to the class.
You want us to memorize facts (such as dates in history).	Handing out a list that we will be tested on.	Ask each student to share with the class a memorization trick (such as a visual cue) that works with one item on this list.
You want us to remember what you taught last month.	Assigning a review sheet.	Give frequent short pop quizzes about earlier material. Go over each quiz, but don't count the grade.

Occasionally, my students said, something they did in school energized them to the point that they wanted to go home and keep working on it. Christina and Nicholas remembered a global studies unit on the French Revolution in which students acted out a courtroom trial of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The project brought even routine homework assignments to life:

I was the queen. So of course I wanted to do my homework all the time, so I could know the facts of what happened and what didn't happen. [So] when someone tried to say I did this or that thing, I could say, "Oh no, I didn't!" —Christina

When curriculum was framed in involving ways, these students realized that academic subjects could elicit the kind of absorbed attention they gave to favorite activities outside school. With teachers' help, their practice outside class could be deliberate—aimed at acquiring new knowledge, applying new skills, and creating their best work.

Calendar for September & October:

September 14-18th

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher Character Students of the Week

All 6 of these students displayed positive character behaviors within our 8 focused traits:  

Be... responsible, respectful, kind, safe, honest, loyal, compassionate, courageous.  

Students:  (left to right) Bella Rose Schroeder (Diamond), Ryan Tamayo Rivera (Onxy), Genaro Arias Martinez (Hive), Jolene Rodriguez (Silver), Tyla Johnson (Elective), Elizabeth Leon Cruz (Karcher Bucks).

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Kudos

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• Marilee Hoffman was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Mariliee and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits. 
• Thank you to S. Berezowitz, Jack Schmidt, Patti Tenhagen, and Alyssa Riggs for all the set-up for this coming Friday's cookout and Banner display.  
• Welcome Ann Ebbers and Lisa Hartlage, new instructional aides, to Karcher!  You have joined an amazing group of people :) 

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Reminders

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• Bells have been programed over the weekend to ring at the start and end of EVERY class period.  We should all notice this change starting on Monday, September 14th. 
• We will be conducting our first fire drill this week.  Please make sure you have your orange bag with the following inside:  clip board with red/green paper, first aide baggy, and flashlight.  If the flashlight needs batteries please let Kim/Jane know and Harvey will order what is needed.  
• We are needing to get everyone's extra-currcular assignments to Ruth ASAP.  We have information from the following individuals:  K. Rummler, B. Berezowitz, S. Berezowitz, Ashley Parr, Hans Block, Marilee Hoffman, Kris Thomsen, Amanda Thate, Mike Jones, Stacey Stoughton, and Donna Keown.  If your name is not listed please get your information to Kim asap!!!
• Monday, September 14th we will have a staff meeting after school starting at 2:40 in the library.  The focus will be on iTime and what Thursday/Friday will look like so you have the ability to inform the students on September 21st about iTime.  This will be a brief overview with more time devoted to your understanding on the 25th.  
• This week's PLC will be focused on Best Instructional Practices with Peggy Black coming in to present/work with our team in the library starting at 2:40.
• This Friday we will be having a modified schedule for the cookout and Banners.  The modified schedule can be found online with the Character/Advisory materials.  
• FNL is back!  The first one will be on October 9th from 5:00-7:00pm.  Please let Mike Jones or Donna Sturdevant know if you are able and willing to help.
• Sue Bekken's students will be starting the school store up with orders on Tuesdays and delivery on Thursdays.  7th grade will take place during 1st hour, 8th grade during 2nd hour.  See Sue with questions.
• Matt and I will begin using the Literacy Walkthrough tool this week.

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Pictures from the week

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Students in Ms. Weis's science class working together on interpreting graphs.

Students in Ms. Weis's science class working together on interpreting graphs.

Student's in Ms. Zeman's class working on their math skills.

Student's reading independently in the library for Ms. Geyso's English class. 

Article of the week:

Who's Asking?

Alfie Kohn

What matters isn't just which questions are asked, but who gets to ask them and what role they play in the curriculum.

When exploring the role of questioning in education, it seems only fitting to ask questions about the process itself. I propose that we start with the customary way of framing this topic and then proceed to questions that are deeper and potentially more subversive of traditional schooling.

Which Questions?

To begin, let's consider what we might ask our students. The least interesting questions are those with straightforward, factual answers. That's why a number of writers have encouraged the use of questions described variously as "true" (Wolf, 1987); "essential" (Simon, 2002); "generative" (Perkins, 1992; Perrone, 1998); "guiding" (Traver, 1998); or "fertile" (Harpaz & Lefstein, 2000). Such questions are open-ended. Sometimes, in fact, no definitive right answer can be found. And even when there is one—or at least when there is reason to prefer some responses to others—the answer isn't obvious and can't be stated in a sentence.

Why is it so hard to find a cure for cancer? Do numbers ever end? Why do people lie? Grappling with meaty questions like these (which were among those generated by a class in Plainview, New York) is a real project … literally. Question-based teaching tends to shade into learning that is problem-based and project-based. Intellectual proficiency is strengthened as students figure out how to do justice to a rich question. As they investigate and come to understand important ideas more fully, new questions arise, along with better ways of asking them. And the learning spirals upward.

Guiding students through this process is not a technique that can be stapled onto our existing pedagogy, nor is it something that teachers can be trained to master during an inservice day. It requires a continual focus on creating a classroom that is about thinking rather than just about absorbing information. Of course one always thinks about something—learning isn't content-free—but the ultimate goal isn't to acquire knowledge (which can always be looked up). "Knowing the right answer is overrated," says Eleanor Duckworth (1987, p. 64), professor emerita at Harvard University. It "requires no decisions, carries no risks, and makes no demands. It is automatic. It is thoughtless."

Thus, every time we ask students "What was the name of the town in which the characters in this story lived?" we leave less time for questions like "Why do you think the characters never left home?" Every minute students are forced to spend memorizing the definition of a word ("What does nationalism mean?") is a minute not spent wrestling with ideas ("What would the world be like if there were no countries?") It's important to "push beyond the factual," says Dennie Palmer Wolf (1987), but unfortunately "extended stretches of questioning in which the information builds from facts toward insight or complex ideas rarely take place" in many classrooms.

By the same token, if we're asking meaningful questions but still using tests (which primarily evaluate students on the number of facts they've crammed into short-term memory) rather than authentic assessments of their understanding (Kohn, 2015), we're giving them a gift with one hand only to take it away with the other.

Deep questions help kids stay curious, grow increasingly resourceful at figuring things out, and become active meaning makers. By structuring learning around such questions, we take the first step toward creating an environment that is not merely academic but also genuinely intellectual.

Whose Questions?

It makes sense to create thoughtful questions for students, but it's even more important to elicit theirquestions. Teaching, like parenting and managing, is greatly improved by following a four-word admonition: Talk less, ask more. And better than asking subject-matter questions is the process of encouraging kids to come up with the questions that matter to them. If this practice is more the exception than the rule in our classrooms, it may be because it requires us to give up some control.

There is a purely practical justification for asking students what they're curious about: Even a gifted teacher can't always figure out the right question to ask a given student at just the right time, as Duckworth (1987) pointed out. Thus, she added, it's fortunate that "children can raise the right question for themselves if the setting is right" (p. 5). As a result, "they are moved to tax themselves to the fullest to find an answer." By inviting their questions, we unleash the power of intrinsic motivation.

This may explain the National Research Council's (1996) declaration that "inquiry into authentic questions generated from student experiences is the central strategy for teaching science" (p. 31). (By "is," we can assume the authors meant "should be.") And their conclusion is not limited to science.

In more traditional classrooms, students are rarely asked what they've been wondering about. "Teachers tend to monopolize the right to question; rarely do more than procedural questions come from students," says Wolf (1987). And interests students do reveal are sometimes dismissed. Susan Engel (2011) observed an elementary school teacher who set up a hands-on activity for her students but then insisted they use the equipment only to complete her assignment. "OK, kids, enough of that," she reprimanded a group of children who were figuring out different uses for a bar with a spring scale attached. "I'll give you time to experiment at recess. This is time for science." Engel commented that the teacher stopped them "just as the children became interested in formulating and answering their own questions—when curiosity, the mechanism that underlies the best learning—kicked in" (p. 626).

The point isn't that a teacher must wait for students to come up with questions and then sit back while they answer them. Progressive education requires active and artful adult involvement, which is more challenging than telling kids what to do, on the one hand, or letting them teach themselves, on the other. In the Reggio Emilia model of early childhood education, for example, "children are involved right from the start in defining questions to be explored" (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1993, p. 193), but teachers then help to clarify, amend, and reformulate those questions, sometimes combining one child's with another's—which, incidentally, offers a strong argument for learning in groups. Reggio educators use the metaphor of having a teacher catch a ball thrown to them by the children (their original question) and then toss it back (after having helped to sharpen that question). Much of the learning results from this back-and-forth process, which is why the formulation and reconsideration of students' questions shouldn't be rushed. And just as the National Research Council's (1996) prescription applies to all subjects, so the co-construction of knowledge described by Reggio educators benefits students of all ages.

Questions Used for What?

John Dewey (1899/1990) described "the old education" as an approach in which "the center of gravity is outside the child. It is in the teacher, the textbook, anywhere and everywhere you please except in the immediate instincts and activities of the child himself" (p. 34). Students are expected to do whatever they're told, to accommodate themselves to a curriculum created by adults who never met them. By contrast, the best sort of education—which is not only more respectful of children but far more effective—takes its cue from the interests of those who are being educated. The center of gravity is in the kids; their purposes and interests are our point of departure.

To take this premise seriously requires us to look beyond how thoughtful the questions are or even who asked them. Important as these criteria are, neither of them gets us very far unless kids' questions are used to shape the curriculum.

Consider the use of K-W-L charts, in which students record what they already know about a particular topic, what they'd like to know more about, and later, what they learned (Ogle, 1986). Done well, this can be a powerful strategy, particularly if, as its inventor recommended, it reminds teachers that "learning shouldn't be framed around just what an author chooses to include, but … involves the identification of the learner's questions and the search for authors or articles dealing with those questions" (p. 569). Too often, though, students are pushed to come up with questions on the spot rather than given sufficient time to reflect on what they'd really like to know. Worse, those questions may then be ignored. I remember visiting a school where a science unit on the human body had been kicked off with the students' (fascinating) questions. The teacher proudly posted the resulting list on the wall—and then proceeded to teach the unit exactly the way she had originally planned.

Of course if the lesson itself is created by students' questions, then they can't be ignored. James Beane (1997), working with his wife, Barbara Brodhagen, designed a model for middle schools that asks students at the beginning of the school year to ponder things they wonder about themselves (How long will I live? Will I be like my parents?) and then meet in small groups to find points of overlap among their questions. They then repeat the process for questions they have about the world (Why do people hate one another? How did religions evolve?) before comparing the two sets of topics to see where they overlap. Finally, as a whole class, students try to reach consensus on broad areas of shared interest—and with the teacher's help, they design units of study to answer their questions.

These investigations, on themes such as "Living in the Future" or "Conflict and Violence," form the basis of the entire year's course of study, which draws as necessary from (and weaves together) virtually all the conventional disciplines. Experience with this method suggests that students in the middle grades, an age group often regarded as particularly challenging to teach, become highly motivated scholars because the curriculum is centered on their questions "rather than on the mastery of fragmented information within the boundaries of subject areas" (Beane, 1997, p. 18).

Thoughtful practitioners and theorists who recognize the value of turning students' questions into the engine that drives instruction tend to be deeply skeptical of the predominant model of school reform constructed on top-down, one-size-fits-all standards. This model has reached its apotheosis in the Common Core "State" Standards, which illustrate a tendency to confuse excellence with uniformity (Karp, 2013/2014; Kohn, 2010; Shannon, 2013). Many educators object not only to the high-stakes tests that are attached to the standards or the unprecedented role of the federal government and corporate foundations in the whole enterprise, but also to the pedagogical model that underlies such initiatives. The first response of any thoughtful educator when presented with something like the Common Core standards is not "How do we implement this?" but "Should we be doing this at all? Do such standards make it easier or harder to create lessons where students' questions are at the center?"

True, it is often possible to find connections between the projects that grow from students' questions and standards that have been imposed from above. Deal and Sterling (1997) offer one example: Kids wonder why Ivory soap floats while other soaps sink, and the teacher can link their investigation to a mandated unit on density and mass. But there's a crucial difference between starting with students' questions (and perhaps reassuring one's superiors that the resulting exploration overlaps with prescribed standards) and starting with a list created by distant authorities but occasionally attempting to enliven those curriculum units by asking kids to suggest some questions. The former is authentic teaching supplemented with a strategy of self-protection; the latter is an abdication of our educational responsibility.

Questions Asked for What Purpose?

Finally, we need to consider not only the best way to create student-centered inquiry (thereby supporting the development of those students as learners), but also how to foster a lifelong disposition to question what one has been told (thereby supporting students' development as participants in a democracy and as human beings). The latter doesn't refer to a bundle of skills, such as those identified with "critical thinking," but to whether and how one is inclined to use one's skills.

To promote the idea of questioning is to swim against the tide. From their first days in school, students are carefully instructed to do what they're told and stay out of trouble. There are rewards, both tangible and symbolic, for those who behave "properly" and penalties for those who don't. Children are trained to sit still, take in what the teacher and textbook say, and regurgitate it on command—all of which fosters a tendency to avoid questioning and a reluctance to express outrage even about outrageous things.

Nevertheless, teachers with enough commitment—and sufficient courage—can challenge these norms through multiple strategies (Kohn, 2004):

• Set up regular opportunities to cultivate skepticism. Former high school history teacher Jim Nehring told me he gave his students photocopies of four different textbooks' accounts of the Salem witch trials, which provided strikingly different explanations, each in a tone of absolute certainty. Students gained not just a deeper understanding of the event, but also a realization that one shouldn't uncritically accept textbooks or other authoritative pronouncements.
• Explicitly invite students to ask probing questions—and model this by inviting them to challenge you. Bring a second adult into the classroom, someone with a different point of view, to remind students that the teacher's perspective isn't the last word (Smith, 1986). Before conducting whole-class discussions, allow students to meet in small groups "to gain confidence and to develop a position collectively … so there is less chance of students being silenced by the teacher's … comments on the issue" (Shor, 1992, p. 71).
• Highlight examples of dissent in teaching various topics, so students learn about people who have overturned established ways of painting or governing or thinking about the natural world. Emphasize issues on which experts still disagree or are uncertain.
• Help students realize that, even with respect to basic facts and skills, many things we accept as givens could be otherwise. It's helpful to know how many ounces are in a pound, but it's much more important to understand the lack of any transcendent rationale for dividing up a pound that way, or for using pounds as a unit of weight in the first place. We might also remind students of how arbitrary the "correct" spellings of words really are.

Setting the Example

Questions can reflect not only a curiosity about the world, but also a desire to make the world better. To that extent, it's vital to reflect on—and share with students—what we (as adults) ask and why. There is evidence that an adult's expression of curiosity can be contagious (Engel, 2011; Johns & Endsley, 1977). The same may be true for modeling skepticism: We can set an example by being willing to ask whether a rule makes sense or whether an institution is legitimate, rather than just accepting unjust policies as "a part of life." If it's possible that our students are damaged by dubious education mandates, then the ultimate challenge for us as educators is this: How willing are we to go beyond the details of implementation and ask whether the whole arrangement makes sense, and, if not, what we can do about it?

Calendar for September: