1. No category

INDEX&MSA&Annual&Meeting&
April&9510,&2015&
The&Allegro&Hotel&
171&West&Randolph&Street&
Chicago,&Illinois&
&
Thursday,&April&9&–&Walnut&Ballroom
!
!
8:00–8:45!a.m.!
Breakfast)and)Registration!
!
8:45–9:00!a.m.!
Convene)and)Welcome.""Lisa"Pullman,"INDEX" "
!
!
!
9:00–10:15!a.m.!
Patrick)Kyllonen,)Center"for"Academic"and"Workforce"Readiness"and"Success,"ETS)
"
"
10:15–10:30!a.m.!
Break"
"
!
"
!
10:30–12:00!p.m.!
Roger)Weissberg,)Chief"Knowledge"Officer,"CASEL"
)
12:00–1:00!p.m.!
Lunch)
)
1:00–1:30!p.m.!
Incorporating)Character)Strengths)into)the)Middle)School,)KC"Cohen,"Riverdale"
Country"School"
!
1:30–3:30!p.m.!
Workshops)(see)pages)3D5)for)descriptions).))
2:30–2:45!p.m.!
Break!
!
1. Data)Informed)DecisionDmaking:)Using)the)MSA)as)a)Vehicle)for)Continuous))
Character)Education)Improvement.)Press!Conference!Room."Jonathan"Martin.!!!
!
2. Building)Creativity,)Curiosity,)and)Collaboration)through)Design)Thinking.)
Cinema!1!Conference!Room."Mindy"Ahrens.")
)
3. Building)School)Culture,)Compassion)&)Values:)Mindfulness)and)Development)
of)Inner)Assets.)Walnut!Ballroom.&Lisa"Miller.!!
!
3:30–5:00!p.m.!
Discussion)Groups)(see)attached)article,)protocol,)and)attendance)list)))
1. Northeast.))Walnut!Ballroom.!Moderators:!Allison"Webster,"Shady"Hill"School"
and"Jennifer"Phillips,"Far"Hills"Country"Day"School.!
2. MidDWest.))Walnut!Ballroom.!Moderator:!Jenifer"Halliday,"Hawken"School.!
3. Southeast)and)South.)Press!Conference!Room.)Moderators:!Amanda"Hayes"
and"Greg"Angilly,"Cape"Henry"Collegiate!
4. Mountain)West)and)West.)Cinema!1!Conference!Room.)Moderators:!!
Barbara"Ostos,"Catlin"Gabel"School"and"Jay"Franklin,"Bush"School!
&
! 5:00!p.m.)
Adjourn!
!
! 6:30!p.m.!
Reception)&)Dinner.!The!Art!Institute!of!Chicago,!111!S!Michigan!Ave.!!
!
Page!1!of!6
INDEX&MSA&Annual&Meeting&
April&9510,&2015&
The&Allegro&Hotel&
171&West&Randolph&Street&
Chicago,&Illinois&
&
Friday,&April&10&–&Walnut&Ballroom)
!
7:15–8:00!a.m.!
!
8:00–9:15!a.m.!
9:15–9:30!a.m.!
!
9:30–11:30!a.m.!
)
Breakfast!
Camille)Farrington,"Research"Associate"(Assistant"Professor),"University"of"Chicago""
!
Break!
Workshops!
1.
!
2.
)
3.
11:30–12:00!p.m.!
!
12:00!p.m.!
!
)
!
!
Data)Informed)DecisionDmaking:)Using)the)MSA)as)a)Vehicle)for)Continuous)
Character)Education)Improvement.)Press!Conference!Room.&Jonathan"Martin.")
Building)Creativity,)Curiosity,)and)Collaboration)through)Design)Thinking.)
Cinema!1!Conference!Room."Mindy"Ahrens.!)
Building)School)Culture,)Compassion)&)Values:)Mindfulness)and)Development)
of)Inner)Assets.!Walnut!Ballroom.)Lisa"Miller.!)
Reconvene)and)WrapDup.)Walnut!Ballroom.)
Adjourn)!
Page!2!of!6
INDEX&MSA&Annual&Meeting&
April&9510,&2015&
The&Allegro&Hotel&
171&West&Randolph&Street&
Chicago,&Illinois&
&
Keynote)Speakers)
)
Roger)Weissberg,)Vice)Chair)of)the)Board)of)Directors)and)Chief)Knowledge)Officer,)CASEL)
Dr.!Weissberg!is!UIC!Distinguished!Professor!of!Psychology!and!Education!and!NoVo!Foundation!
Endowed!Chair!in!Social!and!Emotional!Learning!at!the!University!of!Illinois!at!Chicago,!where!he!directs!
the!Social!and!Emotional!Learning!(SEL)!Research!Group.!For!the!past!three!decades!Weissberg!has!
trained!scholars!and!practitioners!about!innovative!ways!to!design,!implement,!and!evaluate!
interventions.!
"
"
"
Patrick)Kyllonen,)Center)for)Academic)and)Workforce)Readiness)and)Success,)ETS!
Dr.!Kyllonen!is!Senior!Research!Director!of!the!Center!for!Academic!and!Workforce!Readiness!and!
Success!at!Educational!Testing!Service!(ETS)!in!Princeton,!N.J.!Center!scientists!conduct!innovative!
research!on!(a)!higher!education!assessment,!(b)!workforce!readiness;!(c)!international!large!scale!
assessment!(e.g.,!Program!for!International!Student!Assessment;!PISA);!and!(d)!21st!century!skills!
assessment,!such!as!creativity,!collaborative!problem!solving,!and!situational!interviews.!Dr.!Kyllonen!
received!his!B.A.!from!St.!John's!University!and!Ph.D.!from!Stanford!University!and!is!author!of!
Generating"Items"for"Cognitive"Tests"(with!S.!Irvine,!2001);!Learning"and"Individual"Differences"(with!P.!L.!
Ackerman!&!R.D.!Roberts,!1999);!Extending"Intelligence:"Enhancement"and"New"Constructs"(with"R.!
Roberts!and!L.!Stankov,!2008),!and!Innovative"Assessment"of"Collaboration"(with!A.!von!Davier!and!M.!
Zhu,!forthcoming).!He!is!a!fellow!of!the!American!Psychological!Association!and!the!American!
Educational!Research!Association,!recipient!of!The!Technical!Cooperation!Program!Achievement!Award!
for!the!“design,!development,!and!evaluation!of!the!TraitbSelf!Description!(TSD)!Personality!Inventory,”!
and!was!a!coauthor!of!the!National!Academy!of!Sciences!2012!report,!Education"for"Life"and"Work:"
Developing"Transferable"Knowledge"and"Skills"in"the"21st"Century.!
)
!
!
Camille)Farrington,)Research)Associate)(Assistant)Professor),)University)of)Chicago)""
Dr.!Farrington!is!a!Research!Associate!(Assistant!Professor)!at!the!University!of!Chicago!School!of!Social!
Service!Administration!and!the!Consortium!on!Chicago!School!Research.!Dr.!Farrington's!research!
focuses!on!policy!and!practice!in!school!reform,!particularly!classroom!instruction!and!assessment,!
academic!rigor,!academic!failure,!and!the!role!of!noncognitive!factors!in!academic!performance.!Dr.!
Farrington!is!the!lead!author!of!Teaching"Adolescents"to"Become"Learners:"The"Role"of"Noncognitive"
Factors"in"Shaping"School"Performance"(2012),!a!comprehensive!research!review!that!illustrates!how!
noncognitive!factors!interact!with!school!and!classroom!contexts!to!affect!students’!academic!
achievement.!She!is!Principal!Investigator!on!two!studies,!the!Becoming"Effective"Learners"Survey!
Development!Project!and!the!8/9!Teacher!Network,!both!focused!on!better!understanding!the!
relationship!between!teacher!practice,!student!noncognitive!factors,!and!school!success.!
!
Page!3!of!6
INDEX&MSA&Annual&Meeting&
April&9510,&2015&
The&Allegro&Hotel&
171&West&Randolph&Street&
Chicago,&Illinois&
&
Workshops)
)
1.))Data)Informed)DecisionDmaking:)Using)the)MSA)as)a)Vehicle)for)Continuous)Character)
Education)Improvement)–)Jonathan)Martin)
!
Fullbgroup!presentation:!!!
• Introducing!the!Data!Informed!Decisionbmaking!Model!
• Sharing!Examples!of!Best!Practice!in!Using!Data!for!Continuous!Improvement,!both!from!MSA!
and!from!other!Assessment!tools!
• Identifying!and!discussing!changes!of!interest!in!the!2015!MSA!report!and!how!they!might!be!
used!for!Data!Informed!DecisionbMaking!
• Facilitating!Small!Group!Conversations!about!Practice!
• Suggesting!Next!Steps!for!Interpreting!Report!and!Using!Data!
• Q&A!
!
Breakout:!
• Taking!deeper!dive!into!the!2015!report!
• Discussing!Data!Literacy!and!how!to!educate!teachers!and!administrators.!Providing!small!group!
projectbchallenges!to!do!with!their!report!and!data!
• Facilitating!an!Action!Plan!for!what!to!do!with!report!back!at!the!school.!!
!
Jonathan!E.!Martin,!a!former!15!year!independent!school!head,!!is!the!cobauthor!of!both!the!64!page!
Mission!Skills!Assessment!User’s!Guide!and!Toolkit!(2014)!and!the!64!page!OECD!Test!for!Schools!(based!
on!PISA)!User’s!Guide!and!Toolkit!(2014).!!!He!has!a!contract!with!Routledge!Press!to!cobauthor!with!Rich!
Roberts,!Ph.D,!a!book!with!the!working!title!NonCognitive"Assessment"in"Schools:"Theory,"Research,"
Practice.!
!
2.))Building)Creativity,)Curiosity,)and)Collaboration)through)Design)Thinking)–)Mindy)Ahrens)
!
How!can!we!gently!push!students!out!of!their!creative!comfort!zone,!provide!opportunities!
for!curiosity!and!build!collaboration!skills!along!the!way?!The!Design!Thinking!Process!can!provide!a!
scaffold!for!students!as!they!practice!these!essential!skills.!During!this!handsbon!workshop!participants!
will!experience!the!Design!Thinking!Process!for!themselves!while!exploring!the!outcomes!of!
creativity,!curiosity!and!collaboration.!
Workshop)outline:!
• Introduction!and!general!workshop!agenda!!
• Design!Thinking!Process!intro!and!goals!for!workshop!!
• A!design!thinking!challenge!
• Longbterm!outcomes!of!Design!Thinking!connected!to!the!3!C's.!!
!
Page!4!of!6
INDEX&MSA&Annual&Meeting&
April&9510,&2015&
The&Allegro&Hotel&
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Chicago,&Illinois&
&
3.))Building)School)Culture,)Compassion)&)Values:))A)Workshop)on)Mindfulness)and)
Development)of)Inner)Assets)–)Lisa)Miller)
&
Rationale:!Mindfulness!with!youth!has!been!shown!in!a!metabanalysis!of!clinical!trials!to!be!a!helpful!
across!a!broad!range!of!outcomes,!to!include:!1)!attention,!2)!amelioration!of!barriers!to!learning,!such!
as!depression!and!anxiety,!and!3)!interpersonal!compassion,!and!4)!positive!psychology!variables.!!
The!broad!range!of!outcomes!suggest!that!mindfulness!effects!the!brain!at!a!level!of!executive!
processing;!perception!and!regulation.!!In!this!sense,!mindfulness!is!a!“gateway”!to!the!development!of!
a!broad!range!of!internal!assets!and!interpersonal!strengths.!!
Implementation:&&
A!basic!structured!practice!of!mindfulness!will!be!taught!followed!by!introduction!to!a!series!of!
adaptations!that!focus!on!inner!asset!development!(personal!identity,!relational!compassion,!personal!
spirituality,!performance).!!Finally!discussion!with!participants!will!focus!on!the!integration!of!these!
practices!into!a!broad!range!of!school!settings.!
!
There!are!four!components!to!the!proposed!workshop!on!mindfulness!and!development!of!inner!assets!
• Brief!overview!of!the!research!that!shows!the!association!between!mindfulness!and!health,!
attention!and!positive!psychology!variables.!!Research!will!be!included!on!interventions!with!youth!
using!both!mindfulness!and/or!mindfulness!plus!inner!assets!development.!
• Training!in!the!core!evidence!based!mindfulness!models,!well!established!by!twenty!years!of!
research.!
• Exposure!to!more!recent!adaptation!of!these!models!to!include!specific!asset!development.!By!
actually!doing!a!range!of!practices!together!during!the!workshop,!educators!are!equipped!to!bring!
the!work!back!to!their!own!schools.!!!
• Small!group!discussion!on!the!flexible!implementation!of!the!practices!across!different!settings!in!
independent!schools.!For!instance!adaptation!of!the!method!as!a!brief!practice!before!science!
class,!or!as!a!“gateway”!practice!before!ethics!orconflictbresolution,!as!used!to!build!collaboration!
with!a!sports!team!or!theatre!caste.!!!
!
Lisa!Miller,!Ph.D.!is!Professor!and!Director!of!Clinical!Psychology!at!Columbia!University,!Teachers!
College,!where!she!also!is!Director!of!the!Spirituality!Mind!Body!Institute!for!science!and!practice.!!Dr.!
Miller!is!the!leading!expert!on!wellness!and!thriving!work!with!children,!adolescence,!families,!and!
schools.!!!She!has!published!over!eighty!articles!and!book!chapters!on!mindfulness,!thriving,!spirituality,!
positive!psychology,!mental!health!and!wellness.!Dr.!Miller!is!recognized!for!her!leadership!in!
pedagogical!innovation,!bringing!together!science!with!spirituality!to!form!the!first!spiritually!oriented!
graduate!program!in!the!Ivy!League.!!She!founded!and!serves!as!EditorbinbChief!of!the!American!
Psychological!Association!journal,!Spirituality"in"Clinical"Practice!and!solo!Editor!of!the!Oxford"University"
Press"Handbook"of"Psychology"and"Spirituality.!Dr.!Miller!is!a!graduate!of!Yale!University!and!the!
University!of!Pennsylvania,!where!she!received!her!doctorate!from!Martin!Seligman!founder!of!positive!
psychology!
!
Page!5!of!6
INDEX&MSA&Annual&Meeting&
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The&Allegro&Hotel&
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Chicago,&Illinois&
&
Discussion)Groups:)Instructions)and)Protocol)
!
Goals:"
• Get!to!know!each!other!
• Strengthen!and!deepen!our!network!!
• Learn!from!each!other!!
!
Instructions:"
• Read!the!attached!article!7"things"every"kid"should"master!by!Susan!Engel!and!the!Four"“A”’s"Text"
Protocol!by!the!National!School!Reform!Faculty!
• For!this!session,!we!will!breakbout!regionally,!and!once!we!are!in!the!3!separate!rooms,!we!will!
subbdivide!into!tables!of!10!for!discussion!purposes!
• Table!Introductions!b!5!minutes!
• Table!discussion!of!the!article,!using!the!“4!A’s!Text!Protocol"!b!30!minutes!
• After!the!article!discussion,!each!person!will!write!down!a!favorite!project,!routine,!activity,!
intervention,!strategy,!or!resource!to!share,!then!share!it!out!with!the!table!group.!b!40!minutes!
• Reconvene!in!main!ballroom!and!each!table!will!share!out!2b4!of!the!sticky!note!ideas.b!15!
minutes!
• After!the!session,!we!will!post!all!the!sticky!notes!around!the!general!meeting!room!for!everyone!
to!view!and!add!to.!
!
!
Page!6!of!6
7 things every kid should master - Magazine - The Boston Globe
Celtics Live
102
3/22/15, 8:36 PM
94
OT 0:31
FAMILIES
7 things every kid should master
A noted Williams College psychologist argues standardized
tests are useful, if they measure the abilities students really
need.
By Susan Engel
FEBRUARY 26, 2015
In the past few years, parents, teachers, and
policy makers have furiously debated whether
standardized tests should be used to promote or
hold back children, fire teachers, and withhold
funds from schools. The debate has focused for
the most part on whether the tests are being
used in unfair ways. But almost no one has
publicly questioned a fundamental assumption!
—!that the tests measure something meaningful
or predict something significant beyond
themselves.
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I have reviewed more than 300 studies of K–12
GREG MABLY
academic tests. What I have discovered is
startling. Most tests used to evaluate students, teachers, and school districts predict
almost nothing except the likelihood of achieving similar scores on subsequent tests. I
have found virtually no research demonstrating a relationship between those tests and
measures of thinking or life outcomes.
CONTINUE READING BELOW ▼
When you hear people debate the use of tests in schools, the talk usually assumes that
the only alternative to the current approach is no testing at all. But nothing could be
further from the truth. Ideally, everyone would benefit from objective measures of
children’s learning in schools. The answer is not to abandon testing, but to measure
the things we most value, and find good ways to do that. How silly to measure a child’s
ability to parse a sentence or solve certain kinds of math problems if in fact those
measures don’t predict anything important about the child or lead to better teaching
practices.
Why not test the things we value, and test them in a way that provides us with an
accurate picture of what children really do, not what they can do under the most
constrained circumstances after the most constrained test preparation? Nor should
this be very difficult. After all, in the past 50 years economists and psychologists have
found ways to measure things as subtle and dynamic as the mechanisms that explain
when and why we give in to impulse, the forces that govern our moral choices, and the
thought processes that underlie unconscious stereotyping.
Here are seven abilities and dispositions that kids should acquire or improve upon!—!
and therefore should be measured!—!while in school. One key feature of the system I
am suggesting is that it depends, like good research, on representative samples rather
than on testing every child every year. We’d use less data, to better effect, and free up
the hours, days, and weeks now spent on standardized test prep and the tests
themselves, time that could be spent on real teaching and learning.
1. Reading
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7 things every kid should master - Magazine - The Boston Globe
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GREG MABLY
CONTINUE READING IT BELOW ▼
!View!Story
The problem with separate
toys for girls and boys
What started our obsession with assigning gender to
playthings, and how can parents combat it?
‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ author
opening a Plainville bookstore
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7 things every kid should master - Magazine - The Boston Globe
3/22/15, 8:36 PM
Boston toddlers drinking coffee not
uncommon, study finds
Every child should be able to read by the end of elementary school. Just as important,
every child should be reading on a regular basis, turning to books and other written
material for pleasure and for information. What does it mean to be able to read? It
means having the ability to read an essay or book and understand it well enough to use
the information in some practical way or to talk about it with another person.
When children can and do read, their language and thinking are different. One way to
measure reading, then, is to take a close look at their language and thinking. For
example, using recordings of children’s everyday speech, developmental psychologists
can calculate two important indicators of intellectual functioning: the grammatical
complexity of their sentences and the size of their working vocabularies. Why not do
the same in schools? We could also employ a written version of this method, collecting
random samples of children’s essays and stories for analysis.
2. Inquiry
Children are born wanting to find things out. But schools have, by and large, done
little to build on this valuable impulse. In fact, when children get to school, they ask
fewer questions, explore less often and with less intensity, and become less curious.
One of the great ironies of our educational system is that it seems to squelch the
impulse most essential to learning new things and to pursuing scientific discovery and
invention. The good news is that researchers have developed excellent methods for
measuring children’s interest in finding things out, as well as their ability to
investigate in increasingly deliberate, thorough, and precise ways.
There are several ways we might measure a child’s disposition to inquire. We can
easily record the number of questions the child asks during a given stretch of time. We
can also rate those questions: Does the child ask questions that can be answered with
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data? Does the child persist in asking questions when he or she doesn’t get the answer
right away? Does the child seem to use a range of techniques to get answers (such as
asking someone else or manipulating objects)?
3. Flexible Thinking and the Use of
Evidence
One of the most important capacities to be
gained by going to school is the ability to think
about a situation in several different ways. This
has already been measured in college students.
Why not measure it in younger children?
Students could write essays in response to a
prompt such as “Choose something you are good
at and describe to your reader how you do it.”
That would allow each student to draw on an
area of expertise, assess his or her ability,
describe a task logically, and convey real
GREG MABLY
information and substance. A prompt of “Write a
description of yourself from a friend’s (or enemy’s) point of view” would help gauge
the ability to understand the perspectives of others, another invaluable skill.
4. Conversation
Conversations are key to achieving many of the other goals here, but they’re also
important in and of themselves. And they’re not hard to measure. Researchers have
been analyzing conversations and the development of conversational skill for many
years. Methods include looking at how long a conversation is (for example, how many
sentences are uttered, how many words are used, how much time the conversation
takes), how many turns each speaker takes, how many of these turns are in response to
what was just said, how many topics are discussed, how full or deep the coverage of a
topic is, and how attuned each speaker is to what has just been said. Outside coders
could code children’s conversations for a number of characteristics: turns taken, depth
of topic, amount of information exchanged, points of view articulated, and number of
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agreements and disagreements within the conversation. Analyses could also look at
things such as the percentage of students in a given classroom who participate in
conversations (to make sure that it’s not just one student or a small group doing all the
talking). These analyses would have to take stock of what kinds of things children
discuss and in what settings.
It would also be good to consider the role of the
teacher in such conversations. Many studies
have shown that adults play a crucial role in the
acquisition of conversational skills. When
researchers have recorded conversations
between children and their parents at home, they
have found that many parents talk frequently
with their children, answering and asking
questions, leading their children to expand and
enrich their answers, and using the
conversations to learn what their children are
thinking about and what they know. Parents also
use the conversations to offer their children new
information about the world, as well as to teach
(albeit without consciously trying to) the art of
EDWARD ACKER
conversation. However, not all families are the
Children are born wanting to find things
same in this regard, and research has also shown
out. But schools have, by and large,
that children living in poverty are much less
done little to build on this valuable
impulse. – Susan Engel
likely to hear and be part of such rich exchanges
at home. This makes it all the more essential for teachers to encourage a lot of
discussion and verbal exchange at school.
It’s not always easy to help a child expand his or her linguistic or narrative repertoire,
especially when the teacher and child come from different oral traditions. Teachers are
given scant training about how to encourage, expand, and deepen children’s
conversations. Schools of education offer lots of courses on curriculum planning,
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reading strategies, assessment, and classroom management, but I have seen few places
where teachers deliberately reflect on or practice ways to have real conversations with
their students.
If teachers knew that their students’ conversations were valuable and that they and
their students were being measured by their conversations, they might get more help
learning how to scaffold or enrich children’s talk. And unlike the kinds of “teaching to
the test” we have come to know, which diminish a child’s educational experience, this
kind of “teaching to the test” would improve children’s educational experiences day in
and day out.
5. Collaborations
Vida had two young sons, both enrolled at the
public school in her suburban community on the
West Coast. Her older son, Quinn, was short, like
his dad. But when you’re 9 years old, being
shorter than the other boys is a liability. Quinn
wore glasses for nearsightedness, and with his
mom’s help he had chosen hip thick-rimmed
glasses that had a band around the back to keep
them in place; they made him look a little odd,
almost as though he were wearing swimming
GREG MABLY
goggles. He was a dreamer, happiest when he
was lost in a book. He was reluctant to do sports and unsure of himself on the
playground. He began to complain to his mother that he didn’t really have friends at
school, and many mornings he didn’t want to go. Vida wasn’t sure how to help him.
Then he began to tell her that lunch was the worst. A little boy named Sean, popular,
athletic, and in command, had his own special table. All the kids referred to it as
“Sean’s table,” and kids could only sit there by invitation. The children in Sean’s inner
circle had permanent chairs at the table. Quinn wasn’t in the inner circle; he wasn’t
even in the outer circle. Not knowing where to sit was making him miserable.
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Page 7 of 11
7 things every kid should master - Magazine - The Boston Globe
3/22/15, 8:36 PM
Though this kind of story appears again and again in parenting magazines and every
group of parents has shared similar tales of social woe, the issue should be an
educational one, not simply a parental ache. Teachers can help children like Quinn
learn how to navigate their social settings, and helping children with this skill is surely
just as valuable as teaching them to subtract and spell. But perhaps more important,
teachers can help kids like Sean learn to resist the natural but undesirable impulse to
exclude and dominate others in social settings. In order to do this, teachers need to
devote time each day to guiding children through the jungle of social interaction.
One of the most robust findings in developmental psychology is that kids learn how to
treat one another by watching the way adults treat them and treat each other. Yet few
teacher-training programs emphasize the informal ways in which teachers behave. Nor
do principals and superintendents attend much to how teachers treat children
throughout the day or to how they interact with other teachers.
When parents ask me what to look for when visiting a new school, I always tell them to
hang out in the hallways, looking at what is on the walls, listening to what teachers say
to students as they pass by, and watching what teachers say to one another. If there’s
one thing we know, it’s that collaboration and kindness emerge in a given setting only
when such values permeate the group. The habits of kindness and teamwork need
time, effort, and attention to develop. In other words, just as it’s important to assess
whether children seem to be getting more skilled at helping each other and working
together and are more inclined to do so, it’s important to assess the ways in which
teachers are making such collaboration possible. It’s true that teachers might prep kids
for such assessments, but in this case the prep itself might actually be of educational
value.
6. Engagement
To find out whether children are regularly absorbed in what they are learning, they
need to be assessed in naturalistic settings. The important thing to find out is whether
children are provided with opportunities to become fully absorbed in various kinds of
activity. It is also essential to assess whether, given those opportunities, they
concentrate on what they are doing and are energized by it.
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Page 8 of 11
7 things every kid should master - Magazine - The Boston Globe
3/22/15, 8:36 PM
The educational philosopher Harry Brighouse
has suggested that the ability to think about
something for 20 minutes at a time (sustained
focus) may be one of the most powerful cognitive
skills we acquire in school. Needless to say, some
children seem to have great stores of such focus
from the get-go while others find the road to
sustained concentration long and nearly
impossible to travel. But the measures I am
GREG MABLY
arguing for here are not meant to show which
child is better at concentrating and which child is worse. Instead, they are meant to
ensure that the majority of children are meeting a basic benchmark. We don’t need to
insist that children become ever more absorbed (in other words, children and schools
don’t need to get higher marks each year). Nor should we hold back children who
never seem as engaged as their buddies. Instead, the assessment should simply show
that an individual child does become deeply immersed in one thing or another
periodically. Similarly, the assessments can show whether a given classroom is
providing enough opportunities for immersion. Thus the engagement measures, like
others described here, provide proof of critical benchmarks for children and for
classrooms.
7. Well-Being
I have argued that first and foremost children
should be acquiring a sense of well-being in
school. So why not ask them periodically how
they feel? Questions might probe what they are
working on that they care about, how often they
like being there, whether they feel known by
adults in the school, and how much of the time
they feel interested in at least some of what they
GREG MABLY
are doing. Economists and psychologists have
shown that people are pretty reliable when it comes to telling us how happy they are.
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Page 9 of 11
7 things every kid should master - Magazine - The Boston Globe
3/22/15, 8:36 PM
Why not use this metric in evaluating our schools?
These are just a few of the methods that would capture a child’s educational progress
more effectively than the typical paper-and-pencil tests. Moreover, the metrics I’m
proposing assess the capacities that actually matter in life outside of the testing room.
We need an empirical snapshot of a school. By approaching assessment this way, we’d
free up students and teachers to do more meaningful work.
Susan Engel is a developmental psychologist in the department of psychology at
Williams College, where she is also the founder and director of the Williams Program
in Teaching. Send comments to [email protected].
Related coverage:
- Opinion: Mass. leads in education, but it’s not because of Deval Patrick
- Finding a summer camp that fits your child’s needs
- Joanna Weiss: Can the tide turn against standardized testing?
- More from the Magazine
Copyright © 2015 by Susan Engel. This excerpt originally appeared in “End of the
Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness (Not Money) Would Transform Our
Schools,” published by The New Press. Reprinted with permission.
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Page 10 of 11
National School Reform Faculty
Harmony Education Center
www.nsrfharmony.org
Four “A”s Text Protocol
Adapted from Judith Gray, Seattle, WA 2005
1. The group reads the text silently, highlighting it and writing notes in the margin on post-it notes in answer to the following four questions (you can also add your own “A”s
• What Assumptions does the author of the text hold?
• What do you Agree with in the text?
• What do you want to Argue with in the text?
• What parts of the text do you want to Aspire to?
2. In a round, have each person identify one assumption in the text, citing the text (with page numbers, if appropriate) as evidence.
3. Either continue in rounds or facilitate a conversation in which the group talks about the text in light of each of the remaining “A”s, taking them one at a time – what do people want to argue with, agree with, and aspire to in the text? Try to move seamlessly from one “A” to the next, giving each “A” enough time for full exploration.
4. End the session with an open discussion framed around a question such as: What does this mean for our work with students? 5. Debrief the text experience.
Protocols are most powerful and effective when used within an ongoing professional learning community such as a Critical Friends Group® and facilitated by a skilled coach. To learn more about professional learning communities and seminars for new or experienced coaches, please visit the National School Reform Faculty website at www.nsrfharmony.org.
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No
No
Yes
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Yes
Yes
Yes