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By Katie Miller
I am a lover of words. For the last twenty years I have been surrounded by words in my career as an English Learner teacher and an Instructional Coach for a Spanish Immersion program. I love creating a vocabulary lesson where students get to explore, dig, discover, and use new words. The linguistic side of language makes me quiver with excitement when a student uses a new word in their oral or written language. I even call myself a “walking thesaurus” as I love to have students learn synonyms and antonyms to expand their daily vocabulary and giggle when they begin to imitate my words.
My students have taught me an important lesson over the years that is a step beyond my vocabulary lessons. They taught me that words can be powerful. Words have power not only in the academic world, like my vocabulary lessons, but in the social and emotional world as well. Each word that is spoken has meaning. Even the most simple words, like “hello,” have meaning to both the speaker and the listener. The speaker has a meaning, but the listener may interpret it differently. Our words are powerful to our students, families, and colleagues.
How can we as educators change the way we use our words to make them positive and affirming to all?
Here is an example of where words matter. As I was walking down the hall to visit a classroom, I noticed a student slithering like a snake down the hallway. I knew this student was not where he needed to be and that his teacher was looking for him.
This student was validated that he was creative and had great imaginative skills, but was redirected to follow the hallway expectations. If I would have said the first statement, he may have felt as though he had no other option and just had to “follow the rules.” Plus, it was a much more fun way to go back to his classroom for him and me!
This is one example of how words can be powerful with adults too (not just our students).
Walking down the hall, or in the staff lounge, one might overhear a conversation about a student. It may sound something like this:
“Ugh, Johnny is driving me crazy today! He just won’t stop tapping his pencil during math! I told him to knock it off and he wouldn’t!
Think about how someone overhearing this conversation now perceives Johnny? How do you think Johnny felt when he was told to “knock it off”? Did that phrase frustrate him more and make it more difficult to redirect him?
What if you heard the teacher say this instead? “Johnny likes to tap his pencil on his desk. I noticed it was bothering other students. So, I went up to him and said, ‘I bet you are going to be a fantastic drummer someday. Let’s practice drumming with your pencil at recess and I’ll give you a fidget toy to use until then’. He loved using the fidget and we finished the lesson without any more disruptions.”
This teacher validated the student’s need to fidget, along with their love of a good beat, while providing the opportunity for the teacher and class to keep focused on the lesson. Also, think about the teacher who is overhearing the second conversation. Not only did they hear that Johnny could be a great musician someday, but also how affirming and positive that other teacher was with their student.
The article “15 Ways to Bring More Positive Language into Your Classroom and School” from We Are Teachers provides a great infographic with examples of how to tweak phrases to be both affirming and positive. 
Words can have power with families as well. I have had many nights where I check my email at home to see an email from a parent who is upset about what happened to their child at school. I have had sleepless nights about some of these emails as to how I was going to handle the discussion with the parent the next day. Then I discovered one of my favorite phrases, pulled from the author Todd Whitaker in his book What Great Principals Do Differently: Twenty Things That Matter Most: “I’m so sorry that happened to you.” From the start, this validates the feelings of the parent, student, or colleague, and opens up the lines of communication immediately. No matter what, someone feels something about the situation. It doesn’t put blame on anyone, but rather affirms to the person that you care and are willing to listen.
I ask that you be cognizant of your words tomorrow, next week, and beyond. Treat them with the power they hold and use that power wisely.
The old phrase “think before you speak” is as true today as it was 20 years ago when I started my career in education. I hope you fall in love with positive and powerful words, too!
by Phil Olson
I am only eight days into the new school year, but I have already experienced several unpleasant moments in which my vision has shifted and forced me to recognize “blind spots.”
One day, after several spirited classes, in which school was starting to feel pre-pandemic normal, in part because I could see smiles in student’s eyes above their masks. I was congratulating myself for a great morning as I headed to the restroom where a quick check in the mirror necessitated a double take: right in the back of my carefully parted hair there was a Alfalfa spike, and it took some water to tame, so it had been there advertising my silliness all day, like the inflatable “air dancers” at car lots. I swallowed my pride and obsessively checked to be sure my buttons and zippers held the rest of me in place.
Another blindspot! I’ve taught that story a dozen times, and I still missed something, not because I hadn't looked, but because I had--again and again; I’d looked so often that my view had become fixed, despite the fact that it was incomplete. 
I continue to discover blinds spots in many areas of my teaching, but none more important than my assessment practices. A powerful, timely driver of my work is Myron Dueck’s new book, Giving Students a Say: Smarter Assessment Practices to Empower and Engage.
Dueck’s new book, like Grading Smarter, Not Harder before it, offers a wealth of research and classroom tested strategies for engaging students where they’re at and honoring their perspectives. Here are a few quotes from the book to chew on before we get into specifics:
Each of these quotes points to common blindspots in the arena of assessment, and collectively they shape Dueck’s thesis: assessment is an essential element of the learning process, so students should be invited into an ongoing discussion about their own learning.
Dueck persuasively argues that the first step in giving students a say is to empower them with learning targets that are clear and understandable, which is often not true of local, state, or national standards. He suggests teachers break their courses down into understandable units and then share with students concise overviews of the knowledge and skills they will be held accountable for. Here’s an example from Giving Students a Say (also available for download on Dueck’s website):
And here is a version of a similarly-styled unit plan I am using with my Grade 9 English classes this fall. When I implemented the tool last week, I immediately received positive feedback. Freshpeople are anxious about their school--the fact that, in high school, grades and transcripts really matter is not lost on them. So they find it comforting to preview expectations and to discover that the learning targets are extensions of previous work they’ve done. They also find it meaningful to identify their own goals and to anticipate checking the boxes when the targets are satisfied.
For teachers, these targets ensure we don’t make assumptions about what students know; instead they establish clear pictures of success in our classes.
For students, these communication tools proactively circumvent embarrassing and deflating blind spots, and they provide empowering information to help students track their progress toward targets.
Dueck explains how, once learning goals are clearly established and reinforced, student engagement in assessment builds with continuity; it benefits from practices that track learning over time like a live-action reel of information, as opposed to drawing conclusions from snapshots of episodic performance . Along the way, he arrives at several provocative conclusions--provocative because they evidence blind spots in our practice.
Some of his findings, summarized:
Yes, there are challenges there, and Dueck backs them with logic, personal experience, and recent, compelling research. Most importantly, he explains how to improve assessment practices: he includes classroom-ready materials for both elementary and secondary settings; he offers a detailed amplification of how to create and employ rubrics that function as learning tools by focusing on communication, as opposed to evaluation; and he makes and a persuasive argument for why and how we must revise grading practices to include student self-reporting and to escape from the imprecision. The tools he offers are substantial, timely, and actionable.
At points in the book, Dueck (and I, by extension) take a hard, not-very-flattering look at our earlier assessment practices, which included ill-defined learning goals, performative tasks that didn’t necessarily align with course objectives, and worse: sometimes our practices were inflexible and punitive. There is no joy for teachers or students in this dynamic. But change is happening, and Giving Students a Say offers a clear prescription for improvement: we need to meet students where they are, sit beside them as they learn, and make feedback a two-way conversation that empowers them to move confidently toward their futures.
Giving Students a Say
with Myron Dueck & Phil Olson | 9.14.21 Dueck triumphantly returns to Third Eye, this time joined by teacher Phil Olson, to discuss his new book and giving students voice.
by Stefanie Whitney
I remember the day I unearthed my father’s report cards from a cardboard box in my parent’s basement. I was old enough to have felt failure in school but not wise enough to anticipate my dad’s reaction to us stumbling upon evidence of his formative years. I felt relief and recognized common ground. Maybe some of my math struggles were actually genetic? Dad did not share my feelings. As I waved his dusty cards in the air, his discontent was as palpable as my relief.
We all have stories that bolster our belief systems.
I cannot recall how old I was when my mom first described herself as not very “school smart.” I do recall, however, how firmly she believed in this story regardless of how fervently I disagreed. Her proof? Report cards. Flimsy little pieces of paper that manage to fortify entire perceptions of self.
I could tell countless stories about both of my parents’ experiences as learners. About the lasting impression grades made on them. How their experiences in school influenced my own, and how learning was often reduced to letters on a crumpled piece of paper. I feel compelled to proclaim, unequivocally, that my parents are and were wise, compassionate, intelligent, and inspiring folk. I was supported, encouraged, and challenged throughout my childhood, teenage, and college years. My parents were also deeply impacted by a grading system; so much depends upon…. I’d like to sit down with William Carlos Williams and compare notes.
And while my parents’ stories are not mine to share, I do have one story of my own to offer. This story stands out among many, in part, because it represents the lasting imprint of a lifetime of being graded. From November 28, 2016 through the end of January 2017, I took a leave of absence from my position as a high school English teacher. I left the classroom so I could return home and spend time with my mom during what we believed would be her last Christmas. We had big plans: a 45th wedding anniversary celebration (December 10), a Christmas Eve pajama party, baking all the cookies, wrapping the tree in mom’s favorite white lights, and sharing space with one another as often and as long as we could. On Wednesday, November 30, 2016, seizures changed the landscape of that leave. Mom remained with us for two weeks. Within those two weeks, I was an untrained hospice nurse, a grieving daughter, and a student trying not to fail in a system I had been conditioned to prioritize. I was in week 7 of a 9 week course for the Educational Leadership program in which I had enrolled eight months prior. We had only two more weeks. During this time, I stayed awake at night with my dad, sister, and husband to hold our breaths when mom’s labored. By day, I helped take care, entreating moments of lucidity--when mom would return behind her smiling eyes. In spare moments when she slept, I wrote papers, read textbooks, and tried to prepare for a test that required rote memorization. Finally, admitting I needed help, I reached out to my professor and asked for more time to take an online multiple choice exam on which I needed an 85% to pass the course. I could try three times before being marked a failure. Because my parents lived too far out in the country, no Verizon wifi booster could procure a strong enough connection to take the exam at home. To this, my professor offered the idea of “coffee shops with internet access.” So, when mom was resting, my husband and I drove 15 miles to the local Perkins in the midst of an early December snowstorm. After internet drops interrupted and consequently eliminated rounds one and two, this was my third and final opportunity. We sat in a side booth, me wearing headphones to drown out the noise of stranded motorists, as spotty wifi and shock carried me through a “successful” third attempt. Now, I just had to write two short essays to be finished with this class. And I had done the math. I asked my professor to allow me to forgo those essays, and I’d take the 'B'. We knew the time was nearing. I no longer had the mental bandwidth to write any more about the effectiveness of data used in peer-reviewed papers. I had done enough. My professor, however, had not done the math. According to his calculations, I would need to write at least one more essay to earn a 'B'. Consequently, in between helping plan my mom’s funeral and going through boxes of pictures, I wrote a paper. I submitted the essay one day later than the brief extension given to me. One day late because, on the due date, I was attending my mom’s funeral. I apologized for my delay and awaited his response. It came 48 hours later: “I did the math wrong; you didn’t actually need the paper.”
I have to tell you: I don’t know this professor’s stories. I don’t know why he felt bound to an “accountability” system that felt so dehumanizing. I do know he was not a bad person; he had a kind smile, apologized when he floundered with technology, and cared about his content.
I also have to tell you that there are questions I still ask myself. Could I have dropped this course and taken it later? Yes. Of course, I had that option--at the cost of retaking a class without my peer group and graduating a semester later. I’m not sure whether it was any one of these factors or a strong fear of failure that most encouraged me to power through. What if mom left while I was away? I carried that worry with me every moment I was away from home and ceaselessly called to check in. Still today, this story is hard for me to tell. In part, because I feel like I made poor decisions. I should have had the wherewithal to stand up for myself, to recognize no grade was worth the personal cost. How was I so distracted by an arbitrary grading system during one of the most difficult times of my life? A system I no longer believed in, yet somehow was still bound by.
I offer this story as the most stubborn data point in my personal belief system. For so many reasons beyond the obvious, this story does not center a person who benefited from a successful grading system. At 39 years old, I struggled to self-advocate with the most understandable reasons against an enduring and flawed system; yet, I expect teenagers to have the capacity to self-advocate against this same system?
I also tell this story because we are emerging (albeit very, very slowly) from a collectively painful time in our world; one that, for many, resulted in both personal and professional hardships. In this moment, a quote by Sarah Wilson, author of This One Wild and Precious Life, takes up space in my mind: “Life has been fundamentally interrupted and all of us here have been given the most glorious opportunity to take an inventory of it. We now have a choice--collectively and individually. We can go back to our old ways. Or we can move forward into something wild, mature, and humanized.”
My fundamental interruption occurred five years ago. Whether five years, five months, or five minutes, this idea of a more humanized world speaks to the disrupted part of my conscience and heart.
Humanized. Human-centered. This concept seems so logical. But I have to ask: If we are not centering humans, then what are we centering?
I have been asked a time or two for data to back up systemic shifts that I have come to champion. I understand why this question is asked, as we use satellite data--a term used by Safir and Dugan in Street Data: A Next Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation--often in education. Grades, graduation rates, attendance, anonymous surveys--these all fit into the category of satellite data. Useful, for sure, as this data points us in a direction. But what does the satellite data we most study tell us about what we most value?
I offer this: satellite data is not human-centered data. Human-centered. A term I recently heard used by Cornelius Minor, educator, author, and equitable literacy reformer, as he described the concept of equitable grading: “I am always striving for grading policies that are human-centered. And if they are human-centered, they are by nature anti-racist, they are by nature anti-ableist, they are by nature anti-homophobic or anti-classist….When I think about any anti-racist grading policy, or any grading policy that is human-centered, it really sees the human first. And by seeing the human first, it is a grading policy that centers growth over random measures of compliance.”
I have come to believe the data that most moves us to change might actually be our own: our own stories, fears, failures, and self-perceptions. Owning them, dusting off the moldy shame, sharing them with others, and finding common ground and humanity in one another’s stories. These approaches to storytelling and story listening allow us to see the human first. To be seen first as a human.
We all have stories. Stories that bolster our belief systems. Our stories are the data that we most lean on when staring down a challenging situation.
Regarding stories, in her book Daring Greatly, Brené Brown references the work of neurologist and novelist Robert Burton:
“Our brains reward us with dopamine when we recognize and complete patterns. Stories are patterns….Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them...even with a half story in our minds, ‘we earn a dopamine reward every time it helps us understand something in our world--even if that explanation is incomplete or wrong.’”
I have made all kinds of assumptions about my professor and others with whom I may disagree. In fact, I’m remarkably good (relative term) at creatively filling in the gaps of so many stories. It’s faster and easier, right? To fill in the gaps with what I think I know rather than sit beside someone and find out truths. But it seems to me that being human-centered is about taking the time to understand one another’s stories rather than filling in the gaps with assumptions.
I don’t pretend this is easy; I don’t pretend to have mastered this approach. But I do offer my personal story as one reason why I stand so firmly in my beliefs. I know you too have stories that fuel your belief systems. Perhaps you will join me in sharing your stories, and to seek out and carefully listen to the stories of others. All the while wondering:
The Life-Changing Magic of Sparking Joy in the Classroom: The Art of KonMariing Our Courses9/5/2021
by Heather M. F. Lyke
— The original version of this piece was first published in April 2019 by RPS Secondary Curriculum & Instruction --
If you know me, you know my husband and I recently purchased a new home. Wanting to downsize (I wanted a tiny house, he wanted no yard, so we compromised on buying and renovating a 1970’s condo), we slowly filtered through our belongings. We pulled items out of closets that we forgot we even had: placing in boxes the linens not used in years, the sweaters we no longer wore, and the camping gear we were not even sure why we purchased in the first place.
Perhaps the hardest part of downsizing was that we sometimes run into those items we needed to get rid of but struggled to part with. Those items that served a purpose in their time but were no longer of use. Items like:
Again, if you know me, you also know I love a good extended metaphor. As I see it, downsizing our course content is much like downsizing a home. As we shift into a new school year, we often find ourselves making adjustments for the school year to come. Particularly with over a year of Covid under our belts, we have had 18+ months of needing to trim content to simply survive in a world of constant shift: online instruction, hybrid structures, and long period of quarantining highlighting how even in education less is indeed more.
In our classrooms, just as in our homes, there are always items that are easy to donate or toss:
However, also like with our homes, there are items that are hard to part with, although maybe we should:
In 2019, to get inspired to downsize our home, my husband and I (along with much of the US), found ourselves watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondō on Netflix. Now, in the fall of 2021, a reminder of all the downsizing we did has resurfaced in the form of Kondō’s newest Netflix show, Sparking Joy with Marie Kondō. Having read her first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, when it was first released, both Netflix series have served as a reminder to me of many of Marie Kondō’s key ideas (which are also reinforced by her newest book, Joy at Work). Ideas that, of course, work great in homes, but that also can be used to help create even more magic in our classrooms. 
7 Steps for Applying the KonMari Method to Our Classrooms:
Getting Started...
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Commit to tidying up all at once.
Marie Kondō shares that the KonMari Method is most effective when you do all the tidying in one fell swoop. Kondō puts it this way:
"From the moment you start tidying, you will be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change. That’s why the task of putting your house in order should be done quickly. It allows you to confront the issues that are really important. Tidying is just a tool, not the final destination. The true goal should be to establish the lifestyle you want most once your house has been put in order."
With this in mind, when you decide it’s time to start tidying up your course content, consider doing it in one fell swoop. Rather than doing what I used to do, which was to set aside a day every week or so during the summer to restructure and revamp; try instead setting as aside a few evenings in a row, a weekend, or even a full week to really dig-in to the task. Just as with a home, perhaps this will help you reset your instruction, allow you to confront the most important pieces, and establish the course structure you and your students need most.
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Imagine the ideal to prevent relapse.
Ask yourself: What is the purpose of tidying up my instruction?
Is there a certain skill your students consistently struggle with and you need more time to fortify that skillset?
Keeping the answers to questions like these at the forefront will help you stay on track, should the tiding ever get overwhelming. (And, if you’re anything like me, it will.)
Discarding...
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Ask yourself questions for each item.
Marie Kondō suggests a few simple questions, moving from a rational to a more emotional approach.
When working with home items, she suggests:
Since these questions don’t really work with instruction; instead, we might ask ourselves questions such as:
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Sparking joy.
One element Marie Kondō is most famous for is the concept of discarding items that no longer ‘spark joy.’ (In fact, her second book is even titled Spark Joy.) Marie Kondō recommends holding each item with both hands and asking yourself: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If it doesn’t, thank it for the purpose it once served and then set it aside to discard.
When it comes to course content and instructional practices, obviously this looks a bit different. We can’t easily hold up a worksheet we now only store electronically to see if it sparks joy, but we can open the file, look it over top to bottom, recall how it went over the last time it was used with students, and then ask ourselves:
If the answer to these questions is ‘yes,’ then keep it around: teach the lesson again, use that text next year, and/or continue to utilize that strategy. However, if doesn’t spark joy, set it aside. Consider making three piles or lists for those items that no longer spark joy in you and your students:
This, at least for me, is the hardest part of tidying up. It may help to keep in mind what Marie Kondō notes in her first book:
“when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.”
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Finish discarding before moving on.
Marie Kondō notes that neat does not equal decluttered. It can be tempting to simply reorganize our material and call it good. But I can take all my pants from my closet, fold them into perfect KonMari rectangles, and move them to my set of drawers—but it won’t change the fact that they don’t fit right or that I never wear them anymore. For that reason, I have to purge items before I fold and rearrange. Only then, once I see what remains, do I really know where the best place is to store my pants. Only then, do I see if I have any gaps in my wardrobe.
Likewise, in our classrooms, we have to get rid of—or least commit to revamping—those items that no longer fit our students. Only then, once we see what remains, do we know what new format or structure might work best for the year to come. Only then, do we see if we have any gaps in our instruction.
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Organize by category.
Marie Kondō always notes to organize by category, not by room. Classroom translation: organize by power standards/essential learning outcomes/prioritized learnings, not by instructional units or lessons. This helps ensure balance and eliminate holes.
Placing...
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Designate a spot for everything.
Everything that is left, should fill a need. **Whew!** Finally, the time comes to reorganize.
This step reminds me of what I did over decade ago when I revamped the American Literature course I was teaching. After having purged a few novels and some grammar units that were no longer sparking joy in my students, I rearranged. Because I figuratively laid everything out on the table, I was able to then see that my remaining content, texts, lessons, etc. fit into six themes. Embracing that fact, I rearranged from teaching American Literature chronologically, as I had always done in the past, to teaching it thematically. But it also meant I had some holes to fill: I was suddenly able to weave in a new book group unit and adjust how I taught grammar by embedding it into our reading and writing tasks. It was a lot of work, but, ultimately, it led to more effective learning in the years that followed.
As my husband and I experienced firsthand with our home, the act of downsizing can feel overwhelming while in the process of discarding. However, we have moved into our new home and have placed all our remaining items back in the best order.
As Marie Kondō states: “the space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming...not for the person we were in the past.”
This is true for our classrooms, too: we need to make them a place where students can grow into who they will become in this ever-changing world...not for the students we taught in the past.
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