Archimedes
of Syracuse (c. 287 BC - c. 212 BC)
One of the greatest challenges we face in achieving
universal mastery of numeracy and literacy is the fact that we haven’t. I truly
believe that both are within our reach. We have the knowledge as well as
proven, evidence-based experience to achieve them. What remains is permission
to do so.
Permission?
Yes! We need systemic permission to shift from
treating failed learning to proactively preventing the failure to learn. This
shift to “prevention” to intervention versus our present intervention model is
now more than ever possible.
In a prevention model, we can aggressively and
proactively identify learning inexperience, emerging conceptual as well as
constructional gaps as they are forming that we know will impair, delay or
prevent the learner from learning what he or she needs to be successful.
Serving as superintendent in rural, poor, and
consistently low performing school system, we needed to seriously pivot from
practices and programs that frankly, were just not producing results. Candidly,
there was really no place to go but up.
We honestly examined whether or not more effort could
be the “game changer” and found that our folks were working extremely hard.
What became clearer was that our instructional core was very frustrated with
the lack of progress and improvement. We needed to take a step back and really
ask some difficult questions.
The key to asking difficult questions was first to
park the egos at the door and second not get caught up in playing the blame
game. I needed to give permission to our staff to suspend making judgments
about past decisions, intent, or level of commitment to improvement.
This sparked the beginning of a shift in our paradigm
of intervention or remediation to a new paradigm of prevention. We queried what
each grade level would, could, and should look like with each learner entering
his or her respective grade level grade level ready.
We designed a continuum of our instructional program.
We intentionally discussed and identified the diversity of learners from those
that ideally progressed with no additional support to those that were
significantly depended upon us for their learning.
We then identified the key transition points on the
continuum – where failed learning was most evident. We identified the key or
leading indicators of “grade level” readiness asking to what extent did our
current instructional program address variance or deviation to the “normal”
progression of our learners.
What we found was our will was extremely strong to do
the right thing. However, we had gaps in our curriculum and instructional
practices that we needed to address differently. Though our commitment to staff
was to build their capacity, competence, and confidence, we knew however, the
learners we were talking about were in our classrooms now - not some time in
the future.
Different for us was intentionally going out to find
technology based supplemental programming that could meet two needs – the needs
of our staff and ultimately the needs of our learners. Let me be resoundingly
clear, technology not to replace or supplant our teachers – technology to do
what our staff needed to assist, inform, co-labor, and leverage time as well as
compliment the profound knowledge our teachers possessed about our students.
Technology-based programs were being used long before
I became superintendent. These programs however were not designed to “prevent”
the failure to learn. Rather, they were designed to remediate “failed
learning”. We needed different programming.
We investigated and interviewed several “solution”
providers culminating with a few, trusted “partners” that not only understood
our situation but also were deeply committed to both our learners and our
staffs’ success. This congruency of values as well as mission led us to
implement a powerful transformative strategy that resulted in never before
experienced levels of achievement for our school system.
Far be it from me to debate Archimedes and his
observation regarding the length of a lever to move the world. Yet, the
placement of the fulcrum is of equal import. For us, the fulcrum consisted of
technology-based supplemental programs. The lever consisted of our staff’s
commitment, determination, focus, and effort. By moving the fulcrum, the lever
moved student learning and achievement. It also built capacity,
competence, and confidence in our teachers and building administrators.
The lever has almost always taken priority and this is
as it should be. Our experience valued our teachers but shifted our
mindset and practice.
As Dr. Larry Lezotte (Correlates of Effective Schools)
often queried, “at great risk and peril, adults are desperately trying to save
learners from going over the waterfall. When will the adults go up stream
to prevent learners from getting in the river?”
And so it is, prevention to intervention – by the way
– can you begin to calculate the repurposing of funds generated by shifting
from treating failed learning to preventing the failure to learn from
treating failed learning to preventing the failure to learn?
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