Part 2 of 3 Collaboration in Elementary Schools: The Role of Engagement

by Jan Duffy

In the previous installment of this series, teacher Jan Duffy introduced us to her incredible 2nd and 3rd graders. Together, Jan and her students choreographed dances for the school’s spring recital. Jan was amazed not only at the intelligence, focus, and creativity of her 7 and 8 year old students, but also with the power of collaboration in inspiring and enhancing their excellence of their work. In this blog, Jan continues her story, focusing on she keeps her students engaged as dancers and as “thinkers.”

As I typed away, and cut and pasted and deleted countless versions of this blog, I kept coming back to what I wanted most to know myself-“Why was the “Beatles Fans” class different?”  What was so special about them that gave them “an edge” over all the others?  I’m not the kind of person who sits back and congratulates herself on a job well done; this wasn’t Me-this was US-together- but there’s no denying that this class overall developed a more advanced form of understanding almost right from the very beginning-Why???

Was it because several influential leaders in the class entered 3rd Grade with a full year of collaborating with constructivist 2nd Grade teachers Chris Andres and Tami Hurst, whose Whole Child philosophy of education is so much like mine and Roberta Taylor’s?  Very possibly, since 3rd Grade is the year most children begin to focus more on being like their “cool” peers, but I’m also convinced that what makes dance “cool” is the fact that I try to teach for personal, interdisciplinary understanding in almost every single thing I do.

That’s the main thing I do that’s different from a lot of dance teachers-I teach to make “Thinkers” out of my students, and possibly a few choreographers-not just dancers.  Because of that, I don’t teach any part of class exactly the very same way, twice in a row, ever.   Not even in their warm-up sequence!  This helps to engage the students immediately-they know they have to pay attention to follow the movements.

The barre exercises in ballet may go in pretty much the same order, but we do usually do them center floor, and still, the patterns, and sequences, and number of repetitions are always a little different. I like to do the exercises in a different order each class, to avoid “boring” repetition.  I also “get tricky” if I see that someone isn’t watching me closely enough!  I lighten up all the brainwork and visual training by adding surprising improvisational moments too, right in the middle of technique, if I feel there’s just no energy coming back to me from the class, or their attention might be wandering.

Even if my students are just following along closely because they’re hoping I’ll do something funny right in the middle of a “serious” exercise, they’re still learning the importance of paying attention to pick up visual cues quickly -without me having to say a word!   From the children’s perspective, that makes paying attention a personal choice-one that has a positive pay-off.   If the dancers aren’t engaged and never see the point-if their learning isn’t personal enough-we’ll never get anywhere!

I also use ‘real” music-and a wide variety of it- so the kids get exposed to more than what they hear on the radio on the way to school, or what they hearing in music class. In the same class period I may run through 5 to 6 types of music: classical, world music from various cultures, pop the kids like-though I have to check the lyrics and the intent of the lyrics too, or look for a Kids Bop or a super clean version from Wal-Mart.  But I also use a lot of pop and rock they haven’t heard before too: oldies from the ‘50’s through the ‘90’s, musical theater show tunes, jazz, swing, electronic music-even sound effects sometimes-you name it.  Keeping the dancers musically “on their toes” to where they seldom know exactly what’s coming next helps maintain their interest and focus.

I try to lay down the choreographer’s way of thinking in my students’  brains right at the beginning of the year, and keep that going throughout the year.  Every time I teach a step, the students get 1-20 minutes to “experiment” with it-they have to add their own moves to whatever step or combination I’ve taught or reviewed that day.   That’s how I get them to drill the step into their own heads- imaginatively.  Most of the kids have so much fun they never even notice they’re practicing-much less working up a sweat doing it!

I always say my teaching style is more related to what I think Vaudeville must have been like: I’m the Performer and the students are the Audience-if I don’t keep them engaged by being ready to change my act at a moment’s notice, before my “audience” gets bored or restless, then the equivalent of rotten tomatoes is going to be thrown at me, and if that happens often enough-I might as well consider myself out of a job!  And that’s why, as it unusual as it may sound, Improvisation, whether structured or free, with props or without, is an important part of every single one of my classes, whether I’m teaching ballet or modern or any other type of dance-from age 3 to age 18-it’s not just the way I work with Primary School students.

Will young children learning about choices and purpose better prepare them for navigating adolescence in a digital world?

by Jo Hoffman

My daughter is a 1st and 2nd grade multiage teacher, and I’ve often observed her as she helps her students creatively solve problems, generate goals to guide their decisions, and think about planning for the best solutions.  Between the years of kindergarten through second grade, children experience a developmental shift characterized by an increase in self-reflection, control of attention, and emotions, and improved perspective-taking (Daniels & Clarkson, 2010) .  Young students are also busy learning associations between words and their meanings; as such, two words, I believe, are emerging as key concepts for young children to develop a greater understanding about during their early elementary years.  With intentional energy and focus, we should be helping children make tangible their understandings of “choice” and “purpose.”

Let me explain why I am making this assertion.  In the summer of 2008, I read two influential books and was introduced to an area of brain research targeting executive function and its impact on decision-making.  The subjects in the books and studies were not young children, but I began to think about and explore how we can perhaps better prepare children in the early childhood years so that as adolescents and young adults in a digital world, they can navigate more successfully the complexities of our time and to engage productively in all its opportunities.

The first book, The Path to Purpose (2008), illustrates the importance of purpose in youth development.  Damon’s landmark study of some twelve hundred 12-22 year olds offers initial findings that “…reveal a society in which purposefulness among young people is the exception rather than the rule” (p. 8).  Sixty-percent of young people from Damon’s study are lacking purpose.  The subjects were from US regions spanning coast to coast, north to south, urban, suburban, and rural and his findings did not vary by region or population.  They all had in common their age, ranging from 12-22, and all lived and played during this time in our society characterized by the ever-expanding digital presence.

The digital natives of Damon’s study literally grew up along with the technology explosion…from basic Nintendo systems to X-box Live; from beepers to today’s sophisticated cell phones; from the early AOL Instant Messaging to today’s popular social networking sites; and the interactive applications of Web 2.0 and 3.0.  Young people born between 1980-2000 are sometimes defined as the first digital generation.  While these uses of technology are powerful and amazing in their connectivity and potential for learning, is there a causal relationship between growing up in the digital world with its ever-present demands, and the current state of ambivalence and absence of commitment as seen in young adults?

Findings in brain-based research may help to get at the root of what may be ailing the digital generation’s psyche and examining the increased physiological demands on the executive function of the brain operating in a digital world may hold clues.  The executive function of the brain is a term used to describe “a set of processes that all have to do with managing oneself and one’s resources in order to achieve a goal”(Cooper-Kahn & Dietzel, 2008, para. 2).  The brain resources for executive function are limited and “…types of actions exhaust executive function and affect subsequent decision-making may even involve the very common activity of making choices itself…The mere act of making a selection may deplete executive resources in the brain” (Amir (2008)p.1).  So then when it comes to making important choices that require more attention and are accompanied by real consequences, the resources needed for executive function may already be depleted from the bombardment of inconsequential choice-making and high frequency responding that characterizes life in the digital world.

The brain’s executive function that is used for choice making is a limited resource tapped equally by making choices of all kinds.  Theoretically, one could expend the executive function resource in a plethora of inconsequential choices.  Executive function has also been shown to be impacted by multitasking, another demand of technology use, which has resulted in lower and less effective organizational function (Franzen, 2001; Manhart, 2004).  The digital playground has exponentially increased the number and complexity of choices students make throughout a day.  Is it any wonder then that the ability to identify positive purpose in life can be likened only to finding a “needle in a haystack?”  To what extent do the constant multitasking demands for making choices and decisions contribute to a pervasive feeling of anxiety and exhaustion that may manifest itself as a lack of purpose?  And if this is the case, then are we perhaps fighting a natural disposition toward purposeful activity?  Damon (2008) summarizes implications from neuroscience research, stating, “…a disposition toward purposeful activity has been bred into us and plays a central role in energizing and guiding [us] through the most important choices that we make in life” (p. 26).

In the second book that inspired me to begin my exploration, Paradox of Choice (2004), Schwartz describes well the paralyzing effects of having too many choices.  After reading this book, questions emerged. Are aspects of our current society and the digital environment responsible in part for the apparent anxiety of this generation? Is the seemingly unlimited array of choices at any given time when we are using digital applications getting in the way of pursuing a positive purpose?  Is there a set of skills or strategies teachers can apply that will help to prepare students over time to face these digital demands?  I’m determined to find out what we can do to better prepare the young learners of the next digital generation and I submit that making concrete connections to expand understandings about purpose and choice for young children may be a good start.

Curriculum targeting the most effective means for young children to investigate purpose and choice has not as yet been developed. As Gardner (2011)aptly describes, young children are essentialists—“…they believe that the phenomena of the world each have a fundamental essence” (p.122).  Theirs are the unchallenged understandings of a basic moral code.  Simply put, choices are good or bad and when one does something “on purpose,” it is usually not very nice.  Recently, in a small pilot study, first graders’ journal entries bore this out.  I was not surprised, in that having been a K-2 grade teacher for several years, I knew this to be true.  But it is only in the past three years or so that I’ve been thinking about what is in essence the GoodPlay Project directed to young children.  Without pointedly providing young children with many activities and much discussion about choice and purpose so that their schemas can expand to gradually learn associations between choice and purpose and the variety of meanings these notions embrace, we may be missing a valuable opportunity to better prepare them as they enter the middle elementary years with perspectives beyond essentialists’ understandings.

Current research is limited when it comes to studies of 4-8 year olds’ and their emerging self-reflection/metacognitive abilities.  Desautel (2009)* examined emerging metacognition in second graders, but with the focus on metacognition about themselves as learners.  What other 21st century skills need to be taught so that perhaps our second generation of digital natives won’t be as affected as the first?

I am suggesting that examining K-3 students’ perceptions of purpose and choice before and after specific intervention activities and discussion may be a good place to begin. (See Hoffman, 2010.)**  In the current study being designed, I will be investigating young children’s development in understanding choice, decision-making, and purpose given specific integrated intervention experiences and activities.  The study will continue building on the findings and implications from the pilot study within a developmentally appropriate context about the need to make concrete the abstract notions of choice and purpose for young digital age learners to broaden their perspectives and to better prepare them for the neurological demands that come from growing up in a digital world.

Recently I read Gardner’s  Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed(2011) and thought about the relationship of choice and purpose to truth, beauty, and goodness.  It may be that as children’s abilities to understand the purpose of things and the choices we make associated with defining and pursuing purpose will help them to recognize truth, beauty, and goodness.  I am exploring how to help today’s young children so that when they become adolescents and college-age they have seen learning as purposeful and are challenged to select a positive path.  It is necessary for young adults to be self-reflective about their choices and decisions with a better understanding of the impact that their digital lives has on their ability to make choices of all kinds.  As the use of digital tools and the content on the Internet becomes more and more personally generated and complex, we need the second digital generation to have learned to critically apply skills of authentication to truths, have an expansive list of criteria of beauty, and feel grounded in what it means to seek and recognize goodness.

*   Desautel, D. ( 2009). Becoming a thinking thinker: Metacognition, self-reflection, and  classroom practice. Teachers College Record, 111, 1997-2020.

** Hoffman, J. (2010).  What can we learn from the first digital generation:  Implications for developing twent-first century learning and thinking skills in the primary grades.  Education 3-13, 38(1), p. 47-54.

Part 1 of 3: Collaboration in Elementary Schools: The Power of Many

by Jan Duffy

Jan Duffy is a lifelong educator and has been a teacher at Woodward Academy since 1991.  A frequent poster on our GoodWork Toolkit Facebook page, one day Jan wrote about a recent dance performance:

“My Primary School Dance students, (Grades 1-3), recently presented their annual Spring Dance Concerts and of the 10 pieces of original choreography performed, no less than 7 pieces were co-choreographed by the students and me. Although those 7 pieces took a month longer to finish than the other dances, I think the empowerment the children felt when they performed those pieces was worth every extra minute! I don’t know a way to prove how much more they understand about what they learned as compared with other young dancers, much less as compared with other students, but I believe there’s a difference. One that every teacher who appreciates Whole Child, authentic instruction can find a way to relate to, and build upon.”

(Complete posting at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/GoodWork-Toolkit/215661020497)
We asked her to tell us a bit more about it.   Her response was so enthusiastic and thoughtful that it was far too long for just one blog.  We’ve divided it into three installments:  1) an introduction (below); 2) a discussion about the importance of engagement and 3) some thoughts about the collaborative process of GoodWork.

On May 1, 2011, 157 very excited young boys and girls in grades 1 to 3 took turns performing on stage in our school’s theater to the delight of their family and friends.  While this recital has taken place for the past 18 years, this year was different. What was remarkable about their program this year was that 6 of the 10 original children’s ballet and modern dances presented, were collaboratively choreographed!  The students in the 2nd Grade Ballet classes made up 2 of their 4 dances with me , and all of my 3rd Grade Modern Dance classes made up their dances with me.

Since 2007, when I began teaching full time at this private, independent day school, I’ve collaboratively choreographed at least one 3rd grade modern or modern/jazz dances each year, but never this many dances – and never with such young students!  It may not sound like such a big deal to those of you who teach authentically – who routinely present the collaborative work of your students – but I’m talking about some very young dance students.

That these 7-9 year old dance students all co-choreographed with me such lengthy pieces for their ages is somewhat of a feat when you consider that the formula I use myself as a “fast” professional choreographer is this one:  1 hour of choreography equals 1 hour of music-just to make up all the movement!   These children’s dances were completely co-choreographed, memorized, cleaned, added to, rehearsed, cleaned again, and rehearsed in costume two or three times in our classroom before we ever went to the theater-and almost all of the work was accomplished in two 20-30 minutes sessions of their 40 minute bi-weekly classes, over a period of 14 weeks.

To me, looking back on it, the fact that I even attempted it is pretty amazing!  After all, when you boil all that math down, and we’re talking about young children making up those dances with me, and getting them ready for performance in just 14 hours!  The piece’ de resistance’ was a suite of modern dances collaboratively choreographed by one of my 3rd grade classes to four of their favorite Beatles tunes. Before, During, and Between the dances, the kids arranged and rearranged 13 small folding chairs in various formations, and through their movements-with the judicious addition or subtraction of several small props- managed to successfully create in turn a “a book-seller’s convention”, “three limos and a sportscar”, “the sun”, and a “stadium style rock concert”. They brought down the house!

Even though their levels of ability, experience and actual technical prowess were no greater than any other class, as individuals, and as a group, this group seemed to intuitively understand how to seamlessly fit their contributions into the work as a whole.  Whether with a partner or a small group,  or as a class, the children worked with “the big picture” in mind to create and extend our movement phrases together, and did so much more cooperatively and professionally-and with more artistic integrity-than I’d ever experienced with a group of young 8 and 9 year olds in over 20 years.  Why was that?  As I began typing this, that’s what I wanted to know, and that’s how this blog post grew so long!  It’s not easy for me not to speak volumes about what’s been my greatest passion in life now for almost my entire career-empowering kids by helping them become leaders and learners just by helping them choreograph.  More on this in the next installment…

GoodWork Pilot in Radboud Academic Hospital, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

by Alexandrien Van Der Burgt-Franken

The GoodWork Project has been working with Stichting Beroepseer (The Professional Pride Foundation) in the Netherlands  for many months, and we are very excited about the  work they are doing. They started a GoodWork Hub this year, and now are piloting GoodWork sessions using the Toolkit in various professional settings. Below, read an account of the first of these sessions at the Radboud Hospital in Nijmegen and the plans for future sessions.

The Professional Pride Foundation in the Netherlands is starting to use  the GoodWork Toolkit  to lead sessions on GoodWork in an academic hospital. The translated GoodWork Toolkit will be used during four sessions.  For these sessions, three groups of hospital employees will be selected: the junior staff, the nurses, and the heads of the different departments of the hospital, including senior doctors and educators. The first session took place in April, and the second session will start this week.

Yolande Witman, doctor and researcher, and Alexandrien van der Burgt, trainer, coach and chairman of the Stichting Beroepseer (Professional Pride Foundation) are the process leaders of these sessions.

The central theme of the first session was, “GoodWork in general”. The main questions here included: what is GoodWork? Why is it important? What do we need to achieve GoodWork? What questions do we have about GoodWork?

The session started with interviews. The participants were asked to interview one another. They discussed the question “What makes you a good professional?”.

After the interviews, the facilitators led a discussion about GoodWork and the inherent challenges in achieving GoodWork.  This discussion enabled the participants to think about their own criteria for GoodWork in their professions.  At the end of this first session the participants were asked to sort the value-sort cards to determine which values they prioritize in their careers.

In the second session, participants will talk about excellence. Two narratives from the Toolkit will be used:  one about Alfred Bloom (“Chasing Excellence”) and Lauren (“The Price of Principles). The target of this session is to formulate a useful definition for excellence and to explore the criteria included in excellence.  Participants will also investigate the difference between professional and personal standards for excellent work.

In the third session, the focus will turn to ethics and GoodWork.  The fourth session will involve a discussion about engagement, or the meaning professionals find in their work.

At the end of these sessions facilitators plan to organize a central meeting where the three different groups will be brought together. During this final meeting, they will share their experiences from previous sessions and exchange ideas. The hope is that these disparate groups will learn from one another.

In September the results of the GoodWork pilot in the Radboud Hospital in Nijmegen will be presented and discussed.

Stay tuned for updates on the next few sessions and on the final session in September.

Coaching at the Frontiers

by Christina Congleton

Compare and contrast:  Marshall Goldsmith, Jayson Blair, and me. First, I’ll tell you how we are different.  Dr. Goldsmith has a reputation for doing “good work”.  He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author, and according to Forbes one of the most influential business thinkers in the world.  Mr. Blair is a former reporter for the New York Times.  He notoriously engaged in “compromised work” by plagiarizing and fabricating news stories and was forced to resign, along with two editors, in 2003.  As for me, I am a master’s student in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, currently reflecting on my professional aspirations.

Aside from a connection to the Times (yes, I am a reader, building a stomach for the digital subscription transition), what all three of us have in common is that we call ourselves “coaches”.  Dr. Goldsmith is an authority on executive coaching.  Mr. Blair, having left the journalism profession, now works as a life and career coach. After completing a year-long training and certification program, I’ve been building my own coaching business focused on human development.  This year I’ll be mentoring a group of students through the same coach training process.

Beyond our shared professional titles, what are the similarities in our work?  The troubling answer is that, even as one of the three coaches mentioned above, I don’t know.  Coaching is an emerging field of practice, still in the process of finding its identity.  It began attracting attention in the 1980’s, and has steadily gained in popularity.  The number of coaching-related articles in peer-reviewed journals has climbed steadily and coaching has been estimated to be a billion dollar industry.  It has also been called a “Wild West”, devoid of barriers to entry or clear selection criteria for consumers.

This wild western terrain is populated by practitioners offering a wide range of services: from Six Sigma business coaching to aura coaching; from Tony Robbins-style motivational work to ADD coaching.  People call themselves “coach” after having read a book, taken a day-long seminar, or dedicated months or even years of their lives to training.

The coaching community did its best to bring a sheriff to town in 1995 by establishing the International Coach Federation (ICF).  The ICF has delineated standards of practice for coaching called Core Competencies, and it has established a Code of Ethics.  These two sets of symbolic codes—one for knowledge and practice, the other for ethics—are what the industry presumptively needs in order to be considered a bona fide profession.  Yet debate continues: whether coaching should be a profession, how it should be monitored,whether its focus should be delineated.

For a study conducted last fall, I interviewed thirteen full-time coaches. A few endorsed the ethics and standards proposed by the ICF, while others said, “I don’t know if the ICF is the answer”, and “I don’t agree with all the ICF has to say”.  Interviewees indicated concerns about the continued lack of barriers to entry, since anyone can “hang a shingle” and call him or herself a coach.  One coach said she was keeping up her ICF certification, but that it held little meaning for her clients. Interestingly, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith does not claim to be certified, yet of the three coaches mentioned in my original comparison he has had the greatest impact on the field.

I’m left with the puzzle of  how best to establish coaching as a profession characterized by good work—work that is excellent, ethical, and engaging.  The good news is that if coaches are “cowboys” exploring the frontiers of a new profession, we certainly represent the warmest hearted of mavericks.  The coaches I interviewed in the fall expressed deep dedication to their work and an impressive sense of responsibility to their clients, their own integrity, and the wider world.  Indeed, such a sense of responsibility is integral to good coaching.  To cultivate a culture of good work, the coaching community will need to do more than tip its hat and ride off into the sunset.  We must reflect on how we can keep ourselves and each other on a well-traveled path,and how we will invite others to advance toward horizons that are still hazy in the distance, but worth pursuing.