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AUTISM FIRST STEPS
AUTISM DAILY NEWSLETTER
Monday, November 19, 2001
INDEX:
* "Wise Not Running Again for School Board"
* "Attention, Class!!! 16 Ways to Be a Smarter Teacher"
*********************************************
"Wise Not Running Again for
School Board"
Gongwer News Service, November 15, 2001
There will be at least open seat on the board for the 2002 election, as
Board Member Sharon Wise (R-Owosso) has decided against running for a second
term.
“That is an appropriate length of time,” Ms. Wise said of the eight
years she has served on the board. “I’d like to give somebody with
children in the system a chance.”
Ms. Wise said she had a child in the public schools, an 11th grader, at
the time she began her service.
Ms. Wise is involved with the Secretary of State race, working for
Calhoun County Clerk Anne Norlander, and said she is not working to find a
replacement for herself on the Republican ticket.
************************************
"Task Force Proposes Bold Information Age-Based
Education Recommendations"MIRS, 11-16-01The
State Board of Education could, at its December meeting, adopt new teacher
preparation, teacher certification and information age standards that would
radically change instructional methods and move public education in Michigan
into the 21st Century.The recommendations are part of an exhaustive report
delivered today by the State Board of Education Task Force on Embracing the
Information Age.Board members were presented a three-hour high technology-based
interaction presentation involving task force members, fifth through eighth
grade students from Birmingham and Detroit, teachers, parents and the board
members.The task force report called the use of information age technology a
critical component in improving academic achievement of Michigan schools,
especially those that are chronically under performing.Michael David WARREN,
Jr., task force chairman, told his colleagues that computerizing classrooms,
providing proper teacher training and reprioritizing education spending would
“unite learners and educators, break down barriers due to school walls and
bridge geographical learning boundaries."The task force made the following
four policy recommendations:- Prepare all educators and administrators to use
Information Age tools, learning techniques and processes;- Revise local and
state academic standards, benchmarks and assessments to properly reflect the
knowledge and skills necessary for success in the Information Age;- Get schools
to expand beyond their four walls and districts and integrate distance learning
and other learning resources into the learning community; and,- Form
collaborative partnerships between chronically under performing schools and
districts to create virtual districts by which all partners share the best
practices and resources.Warren called the recommendations “profound and bold changes
we need to undertake if we expect all our children to be prepared for the 21st
Century.”While acknowledging the state has made progress in its efforts to
introduce Information Age practices and technology in Michigan schools, the
task force called the progress “disjointed, uncoordinated, and moved forward
without a bold, unifying vision from the state level.”“Many of yesterday's
solutions have become today's problems,” said Dorothy BEARDMORE, task
force member and former president of the State Board of Education. “We have
moved beyond industrial age learning and an agricultural calendar.”The task
force report said the state is “simply an average state” and lags behind
neighboring states in critical areas such as the number of instructional
computers and access to computers.Task force member James J. BOSCO, from
Western Michigan University's College of Education, said he has a great sense
of frustration when “I see what is possible, what is actual and the great
disparity between the two” when it comes to the use of Information Age
technology and teaching methods in public schools.Warren urged the Board to
next month replace the outdated State Board standard for teacher preparation
regarding technology, require the Department of Education to test new standards
in the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification, adopt Information Age Standards
for School Administrators and modify accreditation criteria to ensure that
school improvement plans will include professional development and adherence to
the new standards.While the task force didn't address the cost factor of
recommendations, Warren told MIRS newsletter the “cost of failing to act
now is too great,” adding that many recommendations would result in cost
savings and gave examples of reprioritizing the purchase of educational tools,
reevaluating and reconfiguring budgeting.“Buy more computers and few text
books,” Warren said suggesting that with the rapid change in national and
international events many textbooks are outdated and that the Internet can more
quickly provide students information from thousands of books and scholars on a
wide variety of subjects.The full task force report can be obtained on the
Department of Education's Web site at: www.mde.state.mi.us.
Today's task force report is the first of several expected in the coming
months. Other task forces are: Ensuring Excellent Educators, Elevating
Educational Leadership, Ensuring Early Childhood Literacy, and Integrating
Communities and Schools.MEMBERS OF THE TASK FORCE ON EMBRACING THE
INFORMATION AGEMichael David WARREN, Jr. – State Board of
EducationDorothy BEARDMORE – Former President, State Board of
EducationJames J. BOSCO – Western Michigan University, College of
EducationJames FITZPATRICK – Michigan Virtual UniversityLisa M. HAMWAY
– SBC AmeritechAndrew HENRY – e-MichiganGregory MARKS– Merit
Network, Inc.James SANDY – Michigan Chamber of CommerceChristine SKOGLUND
– Detroit Public SchoolsDale TRUDING – Birmingham Public
SchoolsKatherine WILLIS – Cyber-state.orgRic WILTSE – Michigan
Association for Computer Users in Learning
************************************
"Attention, Class!!! 16
Ways to Be a Smarter Teacher"
from FastCompany.com's December 2001 Magazine, by Chuck Salter
"In an economy filled with surprise and uncertainty,
being an effective leader means being a good teacher. But how do you lead and
teach at the same time? Who are your most important students? And what about
recess?"
George Bernard Shaw could not have been more wrong when he coined the
famous maxim, "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches." In a
fast-moving economy that is driven by ideas, an essential part of being a
leader is being a good teacher. How else do you persuade everyone in an
organization -- whether that means 50 employees or 50,000 -- to move in the
same direction? How do you refocus the staff around a scaled-down strategy to
survive an economic slump? How do you ensure that people at every level
understand the priorities of the moment? How do you develop the leaders of
tomorrow? Simple: You teach. That's different from giving a speech in a
companywide meeting or giving orders to a subordinate. That's not teaching;
that's dictating. Telling people what to do doesn't guarantee that they will
learn enough to think for themselves in the future. Instead, it may mean that
they'll depend on you or their superiors even more and that they will stop
taking chances, stop innovating, stop learning. What do great teachers do that
you should be doing in your role as a leader? Read on. We consulted the people
who know best: teachers themselves. All sorts of teachers. Some of them teach
formally in classrooms. Some teach informally -- in their offices, during
dinner, on the fly -- as they're running companies. Our experts have taught
senior executives, software developers, sales reps, and MBA students, as well
as middle-school students, musicians, surgeons, and other teachers. Good
teaching, it turns out, is universal. Whether the topic is a new-product
launch, social studies, or a triple bypass, the same principles -- and many of
the same techniques -- apply. Are you ready to learn? Grab a desk, and open
your notebooks.
1. It's not about you; it's about them.
Some
teachers see themselves as the designated expert whose role is to impart their
knowledge to students who are empty vessels. That's the wrong metaphor, says
William Rando, who has been training college-level teachers for 15 years. The
best instructors see themselves as guides. They share what they know, but they
understand that they are not the focus. Their students are. "It's hard for
some teachers to understand that teaching is really not about them," says
Rando, who runs the Office of Teaching Fellow Preparation and Development at
Yale University. "There's something counterintuitive about that. But it
doesn't mean that you don't matter. It means that instead of asking, 'What am I
going to do today?' you ask, 'What are my students going to do today?' "
2. Study your students.
It's not enough to know your material. You need to know the people you're
teaching -- their talents, prior experience, and needs. Otherwise, how can you
know for certain what they already know and what they need to learn? "I
tell my teachers to imagine that someone called and said, 'I'm trying to get to
Yale,' " says Rando. "The first question you have to ask is, 'Where
are you?' You have to know where the person is starting from before you can
help him reach the destination. It may sound obvious, but as teachers, we
sometimes begin the journey and forget to ask our students, 'Where are you?
Where are you starting from?' " Yoheved Kaplinsky, chair of the piano
department at the Juilliard School, pays attention to her students'
self-awareness. "I want to see my students evaluate their own playing,"
she says. "That gives me an idea of how astute or delusional they are. You
can listen between the lines and get a sense of their personality."
3. Students take risks when teachers create a safe environment.
Learning requires vulnerability, says Michele Forman, who teaches social
studies at Middlebury Union High School in Middlebury, Vermont. Students have
to acknowledge what they don't know, take risks, and rethink what they thought
they knew. That can be an uncomfortable -- even scary -- situation for anyone. A
little warmth goes a long way, says Forman, the 2001 National Teacher of the
Year. Like having a couch and floor pillows in one corner of the classroom. Or
decorating the walls with her students' work, because "it's their
space." The result is a learning environment that is emotionally,
intellectually, and psychologically safe. "If they aren't feeling well, I
make them a cup of peppermint tea. If they're hungry, I feed them," says
Forman. "It can be the simplest thing, but it sends an important
message." Students need to know that they can trust the instructor. Hence,
another Forman rule: No sarcasm in the classroom. "It creates the fear
that you're going to make them look bad," she says.
4. Great teachers exude passion as well as purpose.
The difference between a good teacher and a great one isn't expertise. It comes
down to passion. Passion for the material. Passion for teaching. The desire is
infectious, says H. Muir, global marketing training manager at SC Johnson, in
Racine, Wisconsin. If the teacher has it, the students will most likely catch
it. "Both of my parents were high-school teachers," Muir says.
"My mother taught behaviorally disabled students, and my father taught
history and government. The most important thing I learned from them is that you
need to have passion, and it has to be genuine. It isn't something you can
fake. Students can tell whether you care or not."
5. Students learn when teachers show them how much they need to learn.
Teaching adults has given Tom McCarty, director of consulting services at
Motorola University, an appreciation for the old adage, "When the student
is ready, the teacher will appear." Some of the people who show up for the
Six Sigma continuous-improvement workshop aren't ready, because they don't think
they need to improve. They don't see the gap between where they are and where
they need to be. Making them aware of that gap is one of McCarty's first
objectives. "Is your team aligned around customer expectations?"
he'll ask. "Of course we are," one of the team leaders will reply.
McCarty will then ask each team member to write down the top-four customer
priorities and post them on the wall so that everyone can read them. "If
there are 15 team members, you'll get 60 different priorities," he says. "Once
they see that for themselves, they'll turn to me and ask, 'Can you help us
here?' "
6. Keep it clear even if you can't keep it simple.
One of the chief attributes of a great teacher is the ability to break down
complex ideas and make them understandable. These days, the same can be said
for business leaders, says Gary Grates, executive director of internal
communications for General Motors. In fact, he says that the essence of
teaching -- and learning -- is communication. "The biggest issue that
leaders face is whether people understand them," says Grates.
"Whether you're talking about Wall Street, partners, customers, or
employees, people must understand the organization's story -- where it's
headed, why you are making these changes, how you work, and how you think.
Otherwise, you're going to lose valuation, sales, new opportunities, or
employees. That's why teaching is important."
7. Practice vulnerability without sacrificing credibility.
To some people, being a teacher -- or a leader -- means appearing as though you
have all the answers. Any sign of vulnerability or ignorance is seen as a sign
of weakness. Those people can make the worst teachers, says Parker Palmer, a
longtime instructor and author of The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner
Landscape of a Teacher's Life ( Jossey-Bass, 1997 ). Sometimes the best
answer a teacher can give is, "I don't know." Instead of losing
credibility, she gains students' trust, and that trust is the basis of a
productive relationship. "We all know that perfection is a mask,"
says Palmer. "So we don't trust the people behind know-it-all masks.
They're not being honest with us. The people with whom we have the deepest
connection are those who acknowledge their struggles to us." Acknowledging
what you don't know shows that you're still learning, that the teacher is, in
fact, still a student. For the leader of an organization, this is a delicate
balancing act, says Mike Leven, former president of Holiday Inn Worldwide and
now chairman and CEO of U.S. Franchise Systems Inc. "While it's okay not
to know a lot of things, people do depend on you to know the answers to certain
questions. You don't want people asking, 'Why is he running the company?'
"
8. Teach from the heart.
The best teaching isn't formulaic; it's personal. Different people teach
Shakespeare in different ways because of who they are and how they see the
world. Or, as Palmer says, "We teach who we are." The act of teaching
requires the courage to explore one's sense of identity. If you don't fully
know yourself, Palmer says, you can't fully know your students, and therefore,
you can't connect with them. People compensate by using clever technique until
they figure this out. Maybe, he says, the jazz musician Charlie Parker put it
best: "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."
9. Repeat the important points.
If you want your employees to remember that new mission statement or market
strategy, you need to give it to them more than once. "The first time you
say something, it's heard," says William H. Rastetter, who taught at MIT
and Harvard before becoming CEO of Idec Pharmaceuticals Corp. "The second
time, it's recognized, and the third time, it's learned." The challenge,
then, is to be consistent without becoming predictable or boring. The best
teachers keep it fresh by finding new ways to express the same points. For
Craig E. Weatherup, chairman and CEO of the Pepsi Bottling Group, the message
that he is constantly pushing is that bottled water -- not cola -- represents
the biggest future growth potential for the company. The 25-member operating
council has heard him expound on this strategy repeatedly -- but he hasn't
repeated himself too much. "You have to cheat a little bit and disguise
the themes so that people think, 'I haven't heard this before,' " he says.
"I always try to find a new slant on the water category, but the
underlying message doesn't change: It's important to the success of this
company."
9. Repeat the important points.
10. Good teachers ask good questions.
Effective teachers understand that learning is about exploring the unknown and
that such exploration begins with questions. Not questions that are simply
lectures in disguise. Not yes-or-no questions that don't spark lively
discussion. But questions that open a door to deeper understanding, such as,
"How does that work?" and "What does that mean?" And GM's
Grates's personal favorite, "Why?" "If you want to get to the
heart of something, ask why five times," he says.David Garvin, who teaches
at Harvard Business School, interviewed a number of teaching executives for his
book Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to
Work ( Harvard Business School Press, 2000 ). He found that one way they
teach sound decision making is by playing devil's advocate. Teaching executives
ask colleagues, "What if we did the opposite of what you're
suggesting?" The idea is not to undermine a decision but to bolster it
through a thorough examination of the options -- even the outlandish ones.
"Although you get promoted by having the right answer," he says,
"it's more important to ask the right questions as you climb higher."
11. You're not passing out information.
You're teaching people how to think. The last thing you want to do is stand up
and tell people what to do. Or give them the answers that you want to hear. The
best instructors are less interested in the answers than in the thinking behind
them. What leaders have to offer is a "teachable point of view," says
Noel Tichy, a professor at the University of Michigan Business School and
author of The Leadership Engine: How Winning Companies Build Leaders at
Every Level ( HarperBusiness, 1997 ). It's how they look at the world,
interpret information, and think through problems. The best teaching leaders
help people learn how to think on their own rather than telling them what to
think. "You want a forceful group of people who know what you want but at
the same time feel free enough to make the day-to-day judgments themselves,"
says Gene Roberts, a longtime editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and
the New York Times who now teaches journalism at the University of
Maryland at College Park. ( During his 18 years at the Inquirer, the paper won
17 Pulitzer Prizes. ) "You have to know when to let go so that people
don't become dependent on you. In the newspaper business, speed is everything,
and if you have people waiting to hear what you have to say before they will
react, you'll get beat."
12. Stop talking -- and start listening.
When it comes to teaching, what you do is nearly as important as what you say.
After all, your students are watching you. One way to show that you care about
them and that you're interested in them is by listening. Effective learning is
a two-way street: It's a dialogue, not a monologue. After asking a question,
bad teachers fill in the silence rather than wait for a response. Instead, says
Muir, the training manager at SC Johnson, try this: Wait 10 seconds. "If
you want to be a good teacher, you need to get comfortable with silence,"
he says. It's in those quiet, perhaps awkward, moments that some of the most
productive thinking occurs. Don't interrupt it.
13. Learn what to listen for.
Levi Watkins teaches heart surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore,
where the residents learn by working side by side with attending and faculty
surgeons. Before surgery, Watkins asks a resident to walk him through the
diagnosis and procedure, as if the tables were turned and he were assisting the
trainee. "I'm listening for how the resident assembles all of this
information, how well she organizes her thoughts," says Watkins.
"Choosing to operate on someone's heart is a very complex decision. You
may have a difference of opinion among doctors, but the buck stops there. We're
the ones who decide which vessels are worthy or not worthy of a bypass
procedure." When Pepsi's Weatherup visits general managers at one of the
company's 300 sites, he pays particular attention to the language he hears. In
a manager's analysis of the local market, for example, Weatherup listens for
references to the company's overall mission statement or to a new strategy that
he has laid out. He's not interested in mimicry. He wants a sense that the
manager is thinking about her piece of the business in the right framework.
"If I hear the language of the company coming back to me, I know that I'm
reaching people," Weatherup says. He was forced to become a good listener
while working in Japan, his first assignment with Pepsi. Because English was a
second language to his colleagues, he became sensitive to the emotion behind
people's words. He still listens for it today. "I'm interested in people's
feelings, not just the latest volume and pricing numbers. I want to know what
frustrates them and what they feel good about."
14. Let your students teach each other.
You're not the only one your students learn from. They also learn on their own
and from their peers. "That's how the triangle of learning works,"
says Marilyn Whirry, who teaches 12th-grade AP English at Mira Costa High
School in Manhattan Beach, California. She's a big believer in small groups.
She'll give the groups a question that is based on the book the students are
reading, and they have to respond to the previous comment before making a new point.
"They listen to each other," says Whirry, the 2000 National Teacher
of the Year. "Maybe their friend has an insight that they hadn't thought
of. Maybe it's something that they can build on. It's exciting to watch."
Yale's Rando has taken the idea one step further. He has designated small
groups to become experts on different topics and then intermingled students in
new groups so that they have to teach another person what they've learned.
"This method replicates how problems occur in life," he says. "Everybody
has a piece of relevant information, making everyone a teacher and a
learner."
15. Avoid using the same approach for everyone.
Good teachers believe that every student can learn, but they understand that
students learn differently. Some are visual. Some grasp the abstract. Some
learn best by reading. So the instructor might adopt a multidimensional
approach, something along these lines: Lecture for 20 minutes, then pose a
multiple-choice question to the class, which is displayed on the board or on a
slide. Next, ask everyone to write down an answer to the question, and then
have people take turns explaining it to someone else in class. After several
minutes, poll the class to find out who chose which answer. Then ask someone
from each of those groups to explain their answer. Rando calls this
"active lecturing."
16. Never stop teaching.
Effective teaching is about the quality of the relationship between the teacher
and the student. It doesn't end when the class or the workday is over. "I
try to stay away from a 9-to-5 attitude, which means that for the hour you're
here, I care about you, but don't bother me afterwards," says Kaplinsky,
the Juilliard professor. "One of the most important ingredients of
teaching is loving it. I come from Israel, where we have a saying: 'More than
the calf wants to suck its mother's milk, the mother wants to impart the milk
to the calf.' " That concludes our lesson on teaching. Any questions?
Anyone? All right then. Class dismissed. Chuck Salter ( csalter@fastcompany.com ), a Fast
Company senior writer, tries to teach the fundamentals of baseball, softball,
and soccer to kids in Baltimore.
Sidebar: The Business of Teaching
Craig E. Weatherup has about 40,000 employees, which means that he has about
40,000 students. As chairman and CEO of the Pepsi Bottling Group, he believes
in trying to teach every chance he gets. "I don't know if it's my
number-one job, but it's pretty close," says Weatherup. "I could talk
about this for days." In his job, teaching is vital, he says, because
25,000 of his employees work unsupervised while delivering or selling Pepsi
products. If they don't understand what's important to PBG's executive team,
the strategy won't drive the front line. As well as attending meetings with the
company's 25-member operating council, Weatherup squeezes in informal
one-on-one sessions with employees in the field, something he learned from
former PepsiCo president Andy Pearson after joining the company in 1974. "You
can't teach unless people believe you care about them," Weatherup says.
Clearly, his most challenging teaching opportunity occurred when PBG split off
from PepsiCo in 1998 and then went public the following year. He knew that
changes of this magnitude could cause widespread confusion. The newly formed
company needed a mission statement. In record time, he and the management team
crafted a new set of operating principles, dubbed the "rules of the
road." On April 7, 1999, Weatherup assembled all 400 location managers. He
explained the importance of these rules, along with PBG's to-the-point new
mission statement, "We sell soda." One week later, those 400 managers
taught the remaining 39,600 or so employees. Each location had a poster
featuring the mission statement, and each employee in attendance
"enrolled" in the new PBG by signing the poster. "When you're
teaching something this important, it has to be personal and public,"
Weatherup says.
Sidebar: The Keys to Good Teaching
How do you help rising superstars fulfill their potential? That's the challenge
facing Yoheved Kaplinsky, chair of the piano department at the prestigious
Juilliard School in New York. She teaches some of the most talented young
musicians in the country. For Kaplinsky, the key is relating to her students as
individuals, not simply as prodigies. "Talent is often coupled with a high
level of sensitivity," she says. "You need a varied vocabulary to
express the same ideas with different students." As a result, she is as
interested in her students' psychology as in their music. "You're teaching
them to become comfortable with themselves and to express what they feel,"
she says. Kaplinsky encourages students to critically evaluate their own
playing and to maintain high standards while avoiding a perfectionism that can
never be satisfied. She knows that this is tricky. The solution, she suggests,
is inspiring them to be lifelong students, ever curious, always striving, never
complacent. Such students are eager to improve, rather than discouraged. "I
tell my students, 'Judge yourself by two standards: where you are today
compared with last week and where you want to be next week.' " Kaplinsky
is particularly aware of her students' perspective, because she was a prodigy
herself. Born in Israel, she began playing as a 5-year-old and later studied
with an instructor who was considered to be one of the best in the country. At
16, Kaplinsky left home for Juilliard, where she earned her doctorate. She has
been teaching there for eight years. "What it takes to be a good teacher
is what it takes to be a good artist: creativity and the ability to express
yourself and your emotions," she says. "Some people have a wonderful
artistic sense, but they can't communicate it. Some teachers have a huge amount
of knowledge, but they can't express it or create the spark in their students
to learn."
Sidebar: Teacher With Heart
Levi Watkins teaches all day, every day. He is a cardiac surgeon at Johns
Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, which is a teaching hospital. Residents there
learn by working alongside veteran physicians like Watkins as they diagnose and
treat patients. Watkins, who also lectures at Johns Hopkins Medical School,
where he is associate dean, takes particular pride in "teaching by
example." As the poem on the wall of his office says, "I'd rather see
a sermon than hear one." He understands that what he does is just as
important as what he says. "If I had to prioritize what I teach, I'd say
that caring is the most important thing," he says. "Any fine program
can teach you surgical procedure." In addition to showing residents his
habit of triple-checking in the OR, Watkins demonstrates what it means to be
close. "I sit down on the bed with my patients, like an old family
doctor," says Watkins. "My residents see me touch someone's hand or
cheek. Those are reassuring things. You can't be emotionally close unless
you're physically close." His residents also see him teaching his patients
and their families about heart surgery, the potential risks, and his backup plans
( another Watkins rule: Have more than one plan ). Watkins attributes his
empathy to growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, where as a boy he marched with
Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil-rights movement. In the 1960s, Watkins
became the first black student at and first black graduate of Vanderbilt
University School of Medicine. "You have to struggle a little bit to
appreciate other people's struggles," he says. Or at the very least, you
need a strong role model. When he came to Hopkins as a resident, Watkins worked
alongside Vincent Gott, the chief cardiac surgeon at the time. "Dr. Gott
taught me how to show compassion for patients," says Watkins. "He was
a sermon that I enjoyed seeing."
**************************************
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