Technology aside, there’s no denying that "kids today" (Don’t you love that expression?) don’t learn like the students of even a few years ago. As a teacher, I used to overhear some colleagues who would criticize students who asked that timeless question: "When will we ever use this?"

"When?" the teacher would mock as he choked down a bite of school-issued corn dog, "How about on Friday’s test?"

And the room would burst into laughter (it’s amazing how many times the same people will laugh at the same joke), I’d chuckle along nervously never quite feeling right about basically telling kids that the answer to that question is, "Never."

As a math teacher, I badly wanted my students to appreciate the wonder that is a quadratic equation, or the simplicity and elegance of the Pythagorean theorem, but I also knew that very few of them would ever work in a job where there boss would burst into their cubicle and say, "Thompson! I want you to find the roots of this equation and I want the results on my desk in five minutes!" or "Smith! Get in here this instant and help me calculate the length of the hypotenuse given the other two sides!"

So Friday morning we had a group of teachers present what I thought was an outstanding staff development presentation on Daggett’s rigor and relevance framework. I think what immediately struck me about the "relevance" of this model is the amount of time we as educators spend in Quadrant A:

Students gather and store bits of knowledge and information. Students are primarily expected to remember or understand this knowledge.

How very exciting. Spending most of your instructional time in Quadrant A changes the R & R from "rigor and relevance" to "remember and regurgitate." Compare that with Quadrant D:

Students have the competence to think in complex ways and to apply their knowledge and skills. Even when confronted with perplexing unknowns, students are able to use extensive knowledge and skill to create solutions and take action that further develops their skills and knowledge.

That’s quite a leap from what many teachers traditionally do in their classrooms and I’m starting to believe that it comes from what we’re expecting our students to do with what they’ve learned. An all-to-common view of education is that a teachers "gives" knowledge to students.  Then, when a certain predetermined amount of information has been given, students take a paper-and-pencil test which purports to measure of how much information they "received."

This view of learning as a transaction is dull, uninteresting, and generally irrelevant. The challenge is clear: How can we create instruction that is interesting, challenging, and somehow connected to students’ lives?

Facilitating this kind of learning isn’t easy, but it helps to begin with the end in mind. If you would like your students to be working on authentic assessments that stretch them to Quadrant D, it’s unreasonable to expect to accomplish this by having them spend the majority of their time learning in Quadrant A. And you’re not going to get there overnight. It takes time to really learn and digest concepts and process them enough to be able to extend them in new and complex ways.

The very fact that learning and understanding at this level requires more time then the "traditional" teach-test cycle means that one of the first concerns from teachers will be, "How am I going to find the time to do all this with all the stuff that [the District / the State / the Test] wants me to teach?" I’m pretty sure that the answer is, "You’re not. Something has to give."

Does this mean thumbing your nose at state mandated competencies and standards? To my way of thinking, it doesn’t. What it does mean, though, is taking the time to weed through all of the stuff teachers are teaching. When teachers realigned curriculum with state-adopted standards, did they just pile this on to what they were teaching already? As teachers, we all became attached to certain topics or units that we loved to teach, but if those don’t jive with the state standards for a particular course or grade level, why are we so attached?

I would argue that in the interest of more effective instruction, there is always room for something to be cut out. Continuing to view state standards and competencies as more things being "piled on" is a very narrow view that doesn’t account for what is not required any more. And even when we look at state standards, there are always those that seem to be emphasized more on state assessments. If a particular standard represents one or two questions on the assessment, it only makes sense to devote a comparable proportion of class time to covering it.

Again, all this revamping of curriculum takes time, but it’s a one-time investment. Or at the very least a once-every-few-years investment. So when confronted with, "When am I supposed to find time to do these kinds of things in my classroom?" I’m more apt to respond with, "That’s a great question! Why don’t you bring down your existing lesson plans? I’ve got copies of the state standards and district curriculum frameworks in my office so I’m sure we can find some wiggle room!"

To me, that’s the best way I can support teachers. Sure, I’ll deal with a problem child from time to time, but as we continue to make school more relevant to kids’ lives, I have a feeling the number of disengaged students who become behavior concerns will continue to decline.

I read Dave Younce’s LeaderTalk post on being an educator and parent, and while my kids aren’t in school right now, our oldest turns 3 this summer (When did that happen?) and will start pre-school in the fall. He’ll be going to school Tuesdays and Thursdays for 3 hours each day.

While I’m not (yet) having to deal with the crossover between parental issues and school discipline issues in the sense that Dave describes, his post did remind me of a conversation I have once in a while and, in fact, addressed as recently as last week.

I’ve had people make comments to me like, "Oh your poor kids – they’ll be in school where Daddy’s the principal…" but I’m not so sure where that’s coming from. I’m sure some of it is them imagining what their lives would have been like if their parent had been the principal when they were in school, but I still don’t see the big deal. I’m sure it’s mostly meant in jest, but it always makes me think about why there seems to be an overwhelming assumption by non-educators that having your parent work in the school you attend is, by default, a bad thing.

I was a teacher’s kid and went to high school where my mom taught English. I was a good kid. A classic underachiever (a story for another post…), but well-liked by teachers and with a pretty good circle of friends. Sometimes I’d go a week without even seeing Mom on campus. Of course, there were 3200 kids in the school, but my point is that even when I had friends in her class, the issue of her working there rarely came up.

Currently, my principal has a kid that goes to our school and, again, it’s never been an issue. I suspect that some of it has to do with the fact that he’s a good principal (not a power-hungry jerk) and his kid is a great student, but what if it went the other way? What if he was a lousy administrator? Or what if his kid was a slacker who was disrespectful to teachers?

I’m making a gross generalization here, but in my experience I have found that teachers’ kids are either the best or the worst students you’ll work with. I think that they’re either raised to be good, responsible people who are held accountable for their actions — both good and bad, or they’re raised with mom or dad excusing every behavior and using their position within the system to shelter the kid from consequences. The worst, most awkward positions I’ve been in as an administrator are having to talk to a teacher about their child’s inappropriate behavior.

Two examples come to mind immediately. Both are actually from my time as a math teacher. First was a student – let’s call her Suzy. Suzy’s mom taught – um – let’s say, History at the school where I was teaching math. Suzy was habitually late to class by more than a minute or two, yet never failed to produce a pass signed by her mom. "Well – she had, you know, ‘girl problems,’" was the most common excuse. The worst part was that Mom would excuse Suzy’s absences on test days, too, because, "After all – she missed so much of your class this week…"

Then there was another student. I’ll call her Molly. Molly’s dad was the assistant principal where I taught and was one of the most polite, respectful, and courteous students I’ve had the pleasure to teach. She was an athlete, a scholar, and an all-around good person. The kind of kid I hope my daughter becomes.

So two kids, both with a parent at the school, both as different as night and day. As a parent, it’s my job to make sure my kids turn out more like Molly and less like Suzy. It’s easy to make excuses for your kids. To try to shelter them from anything unpleasant happening to them in their lives, but that’s doing little to prepare them for a reality where they will be held accountable for their decisions and actions.

I was accountable for myself in high school. My mom wouldn’t even excuse my absence on Senior Skip Day. "Don’t expect me to lie for you. If you skip school and get caught, you’ll have to deal with the consequences." Of course, this wasn’t a popular position with me at the time, but as a parent and educator myself, and with the benefit of some growing up, I understand, respect, and appreciate why she took that stance.

We work very hard with our son (our daughter is only 7 weeks old…) to teach him to do the right thing because it’s the right thing – not because of some real or imagined consequence or punishment from us. It is my hope that he’ll grow up to be the kind of young man that I’m proud to have enrolled in the school where I work. And that he won’t be embarrassed if Dad’s name is on the door of the principal’s office.