Our PISA Scores in Math

This week’s article summary from The Hechinger Report is U.S. Ranks Near the Bottom in Math.

Some of you may have heard that PISA scores (an international test administered every three years to 10th graders) for the U.S. dropped in math this year.

Although the drop is troubling, there is optimism in that some schools in the U.S.—like Trinity—have begun to teach math differently, and perhaps we’ll see the PISA scores rise in the coming years.

The article talks about how high performing PISA countries teach math, e.g., focusing on fewer topics but studying them in greater depth, ensuring mastery of one topic at a time before moving to the next topic.

As the work of Jo Boaler at Stanford attests (and many of you have become familiar with her research and subsequent recommendations), math requires flexible thinking—something that many American kids struggle in, which is especially evident on PISA questions requiring multi-steps and creative thinking and problem solving.

American kids are often proficient in one-step computation because this has been the prevailing pedagogy of math for decades. However, research is showing that true conceptual understanding and the ability to approach and solve a problem in multiple ways leads to better confidence and performance in math. Hence the reason we have begin having ‘math talks’ with our kids.

I’m optimistic that this new pedagogical approach will lead to better quantitative results for American students. 

Joe

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The math achievement of American high school students in 2015 fell for the second time in a row on a major international benchmark, pushing the United States down to the bottom half of 72 nations around the world who participate in the international test, known as the Program for International Student Assessment or PISA.  

Among the 35 industrialized nations that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. now ranks 31st.

Both reading and science scores were steady, with U.S. students scoring near the international average in both subjects.

The 2015 PISA results showed that students across the board, from bottom to middle to top performers, were doing worse in math. It wasn’t just one segment of students who brought the national average down.

The weak math performance echoed the results of a second national exam, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), on which 4th and 8th graders also posted lower math scores on the 2015 test.

The PISA test is administered every three years around the world to measure what 15-year-old students know in math, reading and science. In the United States, it’s primarily taken by 10th graders. The U.S. has never been a strong performer globally, but has generally scored near the average since the test began in 2000.  In 2012 math scores deteriorated a few points. Now, with the 2015 results in, it’s a clear downward trend.

Math has always been the most difficult subject for American students. Even students in Massachusetts, one of the top performing states in the nation, do no better than average globally.

Higher performing nations structure their math curriculum differently, teaching fewer topics, but in greater depth. They also teach math topics in a sequential order, asking students to master one topic at a time, rather than cycling back to the same concept year after year.

Students are often good at answering the first layer of a problem in the United States, but as soon as students have to go deeper and answer the more complex parts of a problem, they have difficulties.

The timing of these results comes just a few years after the Common Core standards were adopted in most U.S. states. It’s still “too early to judge” if they’re working.

The Common Core concept is quite well aligned with many high performing education systems.

There are two silver linings for the United States. In science, the achievement gap between rich and poor is closing, albeit not by enough yet to raise the overall score of the whole nation.

And second, even though only a small portion of U.S. students hit the most advanced level on the science test, the country is large enough that it still produces 300,000 high-performing 15-year olds in the subject. Among the four regions in China that currently participate in the PISA test (Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu and Guangdong), a higher percentage of test-takers hit the advanced level, but that still produces fewer top science students — roughly 180,000.

The U.S. actually improved its rankings in reading and science, because other nations did worse and slipped in status. Among the 60 nations and regions that took the PISA test in both 2012 and 2015, the U.S. ranked 15th in reading and 18th in science, up three notches in each subject.One of the nations that slipped considerably was Finland, which had been a beacon to education reformers for its strong results in previous years.

Singapore regained its top slot. It had been temporarily dethroned by Shanghai, an elite, wealthy region in China, where the scores were extraordinarily high during the previous testing cycle. But now that Shanghai’s scores are combined with three other Chinese regions, mainland China has slipped to sixth place.

The Importance of Self-Evaluation

This week’s article summary from the New York Times is The Secret Ingredient for Success.

Although the article is about how a chef became a restaurant magnate through self-examination of what was and wasn’t working in his first restaurant, it resonated for me because it confirms the importance of giving our students ample opportunities to develop and practice self-assessment and reflection--in areas such as My Learning and student-led conferences.

The article—and soon to be a full book—shows the importance of self-awareness and critical examination in success. The authors of the article interviewed successful people in business, sports, etc. and found that while talent, persistence, and luck are obvious factors in eventual success, so is the ability to look at oneself.

The article talks about the difference between ‘single and double loop learning’ with the latter including the ability to look inward and critically examine one’s own decisions, missteps, biases, etc.  rather than only looking (and blaming) outward factors to become more successful in any endeavor.

I like seeing real-life and research-based affirmation of what Trinity believes and practices!

Joe

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What does self-awareness have to do with a restaurant empire?

David Chang’s experience is instructive.

Mr. Chang is an internationally renowned, award-winning Korean-American chef with eight restaurants from Toronto to Sydney. He says he worked himself to the bone to realize his dream — to own a humble noodle bar.

He spent years cooking in some of New York City’s best restaurants, apprenticed in different noodle shops in Japan and then, finally, worked in his tiny restaurant.

Mr. Chang could barely pay himself a salary. He had trouble keeping staff. And he was miserably stressed.

He recalls a low moment when he went with his staff on a night off to eat burgers at a restaurant that was everything his wasn’t — packed, critically acclaimed, and financially successful. He could cook better than they did, so why was his restaurant failing?

Mr. Chang could have blamed someone else for his troubles, or worked harder, or he could have made minor tweaks to the menu. Instead he looked inward and subjected himself to brutal self-assessment.

Was the humble noodle bar of his dreams economically viable? Sure, a traditional noodle dish had its charm but wouldn’t work as the mainstay of a restaurant.

Mr. Chang changed course. Rather than worry about what a noodle bar should serve, he stalked the produce at the greenmarket for inspiration. Then he went back to the kitchen and invented recipes, crowding the menu with wild combinations of dishes. What happened next Mr. Chang still considers “kind of ridiculous” — the crowds came, rave reviews piled up, and awards followed.

During the 1970s, Chris Argyris, a business theorist at Harvard Business School began to research what happens to organizations and people, like Mr. Chang, when they find obstacles in their paths.

Professor Argyris called the most common response single loop learning — an insular mental process in which we consider possible external or technical reasons for obstacles.

Vastly more effective is the cognitive approach that Professor Argyris called double-loop learning. In this mode we — like Mr. Chang — question every aspect of our approach, including our methodology, biases, and deeply held assumptions.

This more psychologically nuanced self-examination requires that we honestly challenge our beliefs and summon the courage to act on that information, which may lead to fresh ways of thinking about our lives and our goals.

In interviews we did with high achievers for a book, we expected to hear that talent, persistence, dedication and luck played crucial roles in their success. Surprisingly, however, self-awareness played an equally strong role.

The successful people we spoke with — in business, entertainment, sports and the arts — all had similar responses when faced with obstacles: they subjected themselves to merciless self-examination that prompted reinvention of their goals and the methods by which they endeavored to achieve them.

No one’s idea of a good time is to take a brutal assessment of their animating assumptions and to acknowledge that those may have contributed to their failure. It’s easy to find pat ways to explain why the world has not adequately rewarded our efforts.

But what we learned from conversation with high achievers is that challenging our assumptions, objectives, at times even our goals, may sometimes push us further than we thought possible. Ask David Chang, who never imagined that sweetbreads and duck sausage rice cakes with kohlrabi and mint would find their way beside his humble noodle dishes — and make him a star.

The Long-Term Benefits of Preschool

This week’s article summary is a recent report on NPR entitled A Lesson for Preschools: When It's Done Right, The Benefits Last.

How important are the preschool years? Elementary years? Middle school years? High school years?

When private-independent school tuitions continue to rise faster than the rate of inflation, it is no longer automatic that families commit to a preschool-12th grade (alpha—omega) independent-private school experience (be it in one or multiple schools).

Parents add up tuition costs through the years (including the cost of a college education) and are left with sticker shock.

As a result, many families today are evaluating and assessing the value and impact of different years of schooling and where they feel their tuition dollars will be best invested.

Some are very happy for their child to attend a local public elementary school and then move to private for middle and high school, while others look to a private elementary education with its foundational formation of habits, skills, and attitudes  and then to public high schools for their vast opportunities, offerings, and courses.

At Trinity, we obviously believe in the investment in the early years of education (early childhood and elementary) in that they form a strong cognitive and social-emotional base for subsequent success and happiness in school and life. 

The article below highlights the long-term benefits of 'high-quality' preschool programs that foster, among other qualities,  "lots of open-ended play and student-directed learning.”

Last week article summary stressed the importance of reading for future success.

This week is how important the preschool years are.

And Trinity’s Early Learners and PreK is as good as it gets!

Joe

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Is preschool worth it?

We know that most pre-kindergarten programs do a good job of improving ' specific skills like phonics and counting, as well as broader social and emotional behaviors, by the time students enter kindergarten.

A recent study looking at more than 20,000 students in a state-funded Virginia preschool program found that kids made large improvements in their alphabet recognition skills.

So the next big question to follow is, Do these benefits last?

New research out of North Carolina says yes, they do. The study found that early childhood programs in that state resulted in higher test scores, a lower chance of being held back in a grade, and a fewer number of children with special education placements.

The key to future success is the quality of the preschool program. Experts cite several key elements in "high-quality" preschool:

• Small class sizes
• Student-directed learning
• Lots of open-ended play.

Researchers have warned that outcomes are short-lived when those elements are not present.

Fostering a Love of Reading

This week’s article summary is Increasing Student Reading Time Improves Comprehension.

As most of us know, there is a strong correlation between the amount of time we read and our working vocabulary. 

This article shows how dramatically different a high school senior’s exposure to vocabulary can be when increasing reading time during her/his school years by as little as 15 minutes per day.

As elementary school teachers, we understand the importance and power of reading, yet this article was sobering to me in that most children in America today average a scant 15 minutes of reading per day (including reading they do at school).

As the article attests, this has long-term implications on breadth of vocabulary, reading comprehension ability, and one’s overall knowledge base—even in a high-tech world, a solid knowledge base is advantageous for subsequent learning.

While the article provides a lot of facts and statistics (for example, high school senior reading levels woefully prepare kids for the mammoth jump to college-level textbooks) an additional key to me is the importance of teachers fostering the joy of reading in children, young adults, and high schoolers.

Although I didn’t become an avid reader until college, I was fortunate in that my parents read to me when I was young, my two schools (one public and one private) gave me plenty of latitude in reading what I liked (sports books, magazines, mysteries), and I became a humanities teacher. 

I always felt as a middle school humanities teacher that perhaps my most important goal was to excite my students about reading. I had a younger colleague who team taught 8th grade English with me. He spent many class periods ignoring our planned curriculum, preferring to stand in front of our students and vividly recount the characters, plots, and themes of books he was reading for pure pleasure. At first, I was annoyed at him; he was taking so much time away from our real curriculum and many of the books he talked about had adult themes that clearly weren’t appropriate for 8th graders. 

Yet over time, I saw how engrossed and enamored our students were by him: not solely about the books but by his unbridled enthusiasm for reading. He was--as last week’s article summary discussed--a ‘truly charismatic adult’ and was a role model for our 8th graders about how exciting and rewarding pleasure reading could be. 

We ultimately managed to find the time to read and discuss our assigned books, yet our students much more enjoyed our open discussion time to share about the books they were now reading independently at home. Also, like last week’s article summary, our students were appropriately empowered in browsing in book stores and choosing their own books.

I’m sure those students—who are now in their 40s—can trace their love of reading to him and still remember him fondly!

Joe

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The majority of students spend fewer than 15 minutes per day reading, and increasing their daily reading time to 30 minutes can improve comprehension and boost student achievement, according to a new study.

The annual What Kids Are Reading report (abut 10 million kids and over 30,000 schools) examines students' overall reading, nonfiction reading and reading across the curriculum, and it analyses the data to identify reading habits that can support student achievement.

54% of students read for less than 15 minutes per day, and between kindergarten and grade 12 those students will be exposed to approximately 1.5 million words.

On the other end of the spectrum, 18% of students read for more than 30 minutes per day, and consequently are exposed to approximately 13.7 million words throughout their K–12 schooling.

That difference of more than 12 million words can affect student achievement. However, when students increase the number of minutes they read per day, their comprehension also improves.

While high-performing students read a lot, students who struggle initially but then begin to dedicate significant time to reading with high understanding can experience accelerated growth during the school year, and thus start to narrow achievement gaps.

The report also found that by the time students finish high school, they typically read books with at a middle school reading level, yet first year college textbooks have an average reading level well beyond a high school reading level, presenting a significant jump in difficulty when students move on to higher education.

The report recommends gently encouraging students to read at more difficult levels, while providing instructional supports to help them improve their reading comprehension at higher reading levels.

Other key findings from the report:

• Girls read an average of 3.7 million words between kindergarten and grade 12
• Boys read just over 3 million words  (23% less than girls)
• Nonfiction materials represent less than one third of kids' overall reading, despite recommendations that elementary and middle school students read about 50% nonfiction, increasing to 70% by the end of high school
• Only 19% of grade 12 students read books that surpass a grade 9 reading level.

Empowering Your Students to Be Resilient, Caring, and Compassionate

This week’s article summary is How to Develop Mindsets for Compassion and Caring in Students.

Developing resilience in students is a popular goal in many schools today, as more and more research illustrates that effort and emotional intelligence (EQ) are perhaps more important than IQ in subsequent success, achievement, and happiness. 

The article resonated with me because it connected resilience development in students (and the author also include care and compassion as vital habits and attitudes for kids) to the classroom climate qualities we as teachers create.

Robert Brooks (some of you may be familiar with his book, Raising Resilient Children) feels an essential quality in any classroom is appropriate empowerment in students. His research shows that care, compassion, and resilience in students all begin with them believing and experiencing that they make and are making a difference in their lives, in their schools, and in their classrooms.

Brooks points out that often when we become frustrated with our students’ behavior, attitude, and/or academic performance, many of us opt for a more controlling classroom, which doesn’t foster student empowerment and rarely improves student performance.

Brooks talks about how seemingly small things—like a morning hello and smile—can have both short and long-term benefits on students.

Brooks knows how difficult teaching is, but his article is a reminder, especially as we begin the second half of the school year,  of how much impact we have and how much we matter and make a difference in the lives and future of our children.

Joe

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Early in his career Dr. Robert Brooks became the principal of a school in a locked-door unit at a psychiatric hospital for children who were severely disturbed and whose behavior showed their turmoil. Within the first few months, Brooks felt demoralized and dreaded work each day.

“I had a very negative mindset,” Brooks said. Brooks is now a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. He has spent his career researching how to help develop resilience in children and adults.

Brooks’ experiences gave him insight and empathy for how difficult teaching can be. When faced with so many challenging students, he felt like nothing he or his staff did would make a difference for how much kids learned or their behavior. 

“What I realized is when you feel you are losing control in a classroom, you become more controlling,” Brooks said. But as he and his staff tried to make their students do exactly as they said, they only behaved worse and learned less.

Brooks tries to remember how he felt in his lowest moments. But he has found that often discouraged educators respond to his message about helping students to develop mindsets for caring and compassion when they hear about the research.

The common denominator among kids who overcome great hardship to succeed is the presence of a “charismatic adult” in their lives, an adult from whom children gather strength. And most often that person is a teacher.

“Everything you do in the classroom can have a major impact on a child’s life, not only in the classroom but later, too,” Brooks said.

He stressed that teachers can have meaningful impact with even small gestures of kindness, dignity, and respect for students. Greeting students by name at the door and smiling are two easy things that students themselves identified as making a big difference in creating a welcoming environment. Spending a little time getting to know kids individually also goes a long way.

At the psychiatric hospital, Brooks began to notice some important practices that made the most difference for school climate, student motivation, and the staff’s ability to build relationships with students. 

“One key ingredient I found is that students will feel more motivated if they have some say over what happens in the classroom,” Brooks said.

Another major finding: “Kids will be more caring and compassionate and resilient in those environments where they feel they are making a difference,” Brooks said.

Sometimes teachers push back against this idea, wondering why students who haven’t finished their own work should be given jobs helping others. Brooks responds that every student should feel like he or she is contributing to the class, and when that type of environment is fostered, motivation flourishes. “Caring leads to resilience,” Brooks said.

Brooks also began to realize that part of the reason he had been so negative about his students was a tendency to focus on their deficits. He began to look for their strengths instead, what he calls “islands of competence.”

“If you just focus on what’s wrong with kids and you don’t spend as much time on what their strengths or beauty are, kids know that,” he said. It’s hard for a child to have a resilient mindset when he believes everyone thinks he’s bad.

Teachers often complain about a lack of student motivation, but Brooks cautions educators not to jump to conclusions about students. No student wants to fail; humans have a natural “drive for effectiveness,” and the unmotivated affect some students show may really be “avoidance motivation.”

“It’s not that they’re not motivated,” Brooks said, “they’re just not motivated to do what we would like them to do.” Instead, they put all their energy into avoiding work that might lead them to fail, or that they don’t find relevant to their lives. There are lots of reasons kids might be motivated to avoid, but calling them lazy or lacking in perseverance or grit is not likely to improve attitudes.

“Once you say a kid is unmotivated or doesn’t care, you’re already reflecting a mindset in which you’re blaming the child, whether you mean to or not,” Brooks said. It’s far more productive to ask questions about why a student might be avoiding work. Getting rid of the accusatory stance will actually free educators to think more creatively about how to help students find purpose, make them feel like they belong, and help them see their own strengths.

Brooks acknowledges that this is not easy work. Some students take a long time to warm up to adults, often pushing a potential ally away just when it seems like progress is being made. And it’s very difficult for teachers not to take behavior personally, to continue reaching out and finding student strengths. Brooks recommends a few activities to help teacher develop “stress hardiness” and ward against burnout.

Reflecting on why they became teachers in the first place can be an effective way to gain perspective. Try  to reflect on the qualities of your favorite teachers.  Would your own students describe you the same way? 

Resilience in teachers is just as important as it is in students. Teachers who are less stressed are able to see changes in the school as inevitable. They seek opportunities to learn from change, rather than seeing it only as a challenge. Resilient people also tend not to blame other people or themselves when things go wrong. Instead, they look for proactive ways to improve the situation.

“Resilient people basically look at what they have control over and they don’t waste time on what they don’t,” Brooks said. So, for example, a teacher has no control over how prepared students are when they enter her classroom, or what kind of experiences they’ve had at home. But she can control how she interacts with those students, so she focuses there.

“It’s not easy to change mindsets,” Brooks admits, but he’s optimistic about the power such a shift can have on school culture, and on educators’ ability to grow mindsets of caring and compassion in their students. “One of the most important things you can do is model compassion,” he said. “Do you model caring? Do you make every child feel they belong in the classroom?”

He laments what he views as a false dichotomy between social and emotional skills and academics in classrooms. He often hears from teachers that the strategies he advocates take time away from academics, but he firmly believes students won’t learn without attention to these issues. Increasingly, schools and districts are agreeing with him, putting more emphasis on non-academic skills for school and life success.

“You have to have a sense of meaning or purpose because if that’s not there we’re going to have kids who say that achievement and GPA is more important than compassion and caring,” Brooks said.

That may already be happening. One national survey of youth across the country found that they valued their own personal achievement above caring for others and they believed that their parents did, too. Brooks hopes that if every educator and parent focuses on helping students develop mindsets for caring, they can reverse that trend.

The Myth of Self Control

This week’s article summary is The Myth of Self Control.

In a couple of weeks, many of us will make resolutions for the New Year. Then by mid to late January, most of those resolutions will have been guiltily forgotten, neglected, and then hidden away only to be recycled at the start of 2018.

But, as the article attests, those of us who always seem to fall prey to temptation are not morally weak. 

Similarly those who resist temptation are not morally superior.

Emerging research reveals some interesting reasons why some of us can while others can’t seem to resist temptation—and these findings have implications for our classrooms.

I’m one of those who can resist temptation. 

As a kid, I could easily walk by my Christmas presents under the tree, overcoming the urge to pick up one and shake it to try to determine its contents. 

Unlike my sister, I could save up money from my allowance for a future bigger purchase. 

In college I never missed an 8:00 am classes; in fact, as unbelievable as this may seem, I never cut a single class in college.

If I had been a participant in the famous marshmallow experiment on resisting temptation, I would have avoided eating one then so I would be rewarded with more later.

But as the article points out, I shouldn’t feel so high and mighty and proud about my uncanny willpower.

First, those of us who have strong self control inherited it—willpower and self restraint are part of our genetic makeup.

Second, as self control is natural for some of us, we from a very young age begin to develop habits that make self control easier. For example, when I walked by my Christmas presents, I didn’t even look at them and thought about something other than Christmas and presents.

Third, again because self control is natural for some of us, we tend to enjoy doing things that require self control. I know exercising and watching what I eat are good for me, so I actually enjoy doing both. 

In education there has been a lot of conversation about fostering grit, executive function skills, and self regulation in students as these skills and habits are important components to future academic and life success--and even to overall happiness. 

And consequently, teachers have been formally teaching them to their students.

But current research is putting a crimp on whether our deliberate instruction about self control, self regulation, and persistence really works for those who by nature are not as programmed for willpower.

Instead, emerging research recommends (the article suggests ’temptation bundling’ as one option) we help provide scaffolding for those who just can’t help themselves and who give into temptation quickly and easily.

It’s why the anti-drug mantra from the 80s “just say no” was so ineffectual and simplistic—some of us by nature can say no, others need more than a banal saying.

This article made me rethink a lot of personal and professional beliefs I had about self control.

Joe

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As the Bible tells it, the first crime committed was a lapse of self-control. Eve was forbidden from tasting the fruit on the tree of knowledge. But the temptation was too much.

 Humanity was just days old, but already we were succumbing to a vice.

The takeaway is clear: when temptation overcomes willpower, it’s a moral failing, worthy of punishment.

Well, was true at the beginning of time remains true today: Human beings are horrible at resisting temptation.

Yet, emerging research makes a strong case that we shouldn’t feel so bad when we fall for temptations.

Studies have found that trying to teach people to resist temptation either only has short-term gains or can be an outright failure.

If we could stop worshiping self-control, maybe we could start thinking about diluting the power of temptation — and helping people meet their goals in new ways with less effort.

Many of us assume that if we want to make big changes in our lives, we have to sweat for it.

But if, for example, the change is to eat fewer sweets, and then you find yourself in front of a pile of cookies, researchers say the pile of cookies has already won.

Our prototypical model of self-control is an angel on one side and the devil on the other, and they battle it out.

We tend to think of people with strong willpower as people who are able to fight this battle effectively, when actually the people who are really good at self-control never have these battles in the first place.

So who are these people who are rarely tested by temptations? And what can we learn from them? There are a few overlapping lessons from this new science:

People who are better at self-control actually enjoy the activities some of us resist— like eating healthy, studying, or exercising.

So engaging in these activities isn’t a chore for them. It’s fun.

If you run to get in shape, but find running to be a miserable activity, you’re probably not going to keep it up.

People who are good at self-control have learned better habits

Recent studies show that people who are good at self-control also tend to have good habits — like exercising regularly, eating healthy, sleeping well, and studying.

People who are good at self-control seem to structure their lives in a way to avoid having to make a self-control decision in the first place. And structuring your life is a skill. People who do the same activity — like running — at the same time each day have an easier time accomplishing their goals. Not because of their willpower, but because the routine makes it easier.

A trick to wake up more quickly in the morning is to set the alarm on the other side of the room. That’s not in-the-moment willpower at play. It’s planning.

This theory harks back to one of the classic studies on self-control: the “marshmallow test,” conducted in the 1960s and ’70s, where kids were told they could either eat one marshmallow sitting in front of them immediately or eat two later. The ability to resist was found to correlate with all sorts of positive life outcomes, like SAT scores and BMIs. But the kids who were best at the test weren’t necessarily intrinsically better at resisting temptation. They employed a critical strategy.

The crucial factor in delaying gratification is the ability to change your perception of the object or action you want to resist. Kids who avoided eating the first marshmallow would find ways not to look it or imagine it as something else.

Some people just experience fewer temptations

Our dispositions are determined in part by our genetics. People high in conscientiousness — a personality trait largely set by genetics — tend to be more vigilant students and tend to be healthier. When it comes to self-control, they won the genetic lottery.

There are many ways of achieving successful self-control, but we’ve really only been looking at one of them: effortful restraint.

One area being researched is “temptation bundling,” in which people make activities more enjoyable by adding a fun component to them—like watching a movie while running on a treadmill.

Researchers are looking beyond the “just say no” approach of the past to boost motivation with the help of smartphone apps and other technology.

This is not to say all effortful restraint is useless, but rather that it should be seen as a last-ditch effort to save ourselves from bad behavior.

Will Robots Replace All Jobs?

This week’s article summary is 3 Things People Can Do In The Classroom That Robots Can’t.

We are all familiar with this modern horror story: As expanding technology continues to replace jobs, many of us will find ourselves (and our children) with an outdated, antiquated set of workplace skills.

More than likely, however, a number of critical skills that involve empathy, nuance, and judgment (the article categorizes them as Giving a Hug, Solving a Mystery, and Telling a Story) will never be mastered by a computer.

Although Tony Wagner’s needed skills for the 21st Century (the 7 Cs) have become a cliché, the reality is that schools today are expected to do much more than, as the article states, provide students with “math and reading skills and some basic facts about the world.” Schools today are expected to be much more intentional in helping students develop social-emotional skills (especially intra and interpersonal), emotional intelligence (EQ), and executive functioning abilities.

Not surprisingly, the author recommends that the focus of schools should be a “breadth of skills” in order to give kids a range of experiences, attitudes, and habits that will equip them with options--and ideally access to all those soon-to-be-invented jobs that we know are coming. This doesn’t mean superficial coverage, but rather an array of deep experiences that extend well beyond some math, some reading, and some of facts.

Of all the jobs that may be replaced by a computer, I am very confident that the teaching of elementary school students will never make that list as we all on a daily basis give hugs, solve mysteries, and tell stories!

Joe

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How should schools best prepare kids to live and work in the second half of the 21st century?

In previous eras, the job of school was simple: Teach them math and reading skills and have them learn some basic facts about the world.

Today the challenge is a lot different. 

Most people all over the world, even in the poorest countries, have much easier access to a calculator, a dictionary, and great swaths of knowledge in their pockets.

And technology isn't just expanding access to knowledge. It's also redefining opportunity. To put it bluntly, more and more people — in all kinds of jobs from truck driver to travel agent to lawyer — are in danger of being replaced by software on the job.

A 2013 study from Oxford University famously estimated that 47% of all jobs are in danger of automation. And earlier this year, the World Economic Forum said 5 million jobs might be gone in just the next four years.

These changes create a huge challenge for schools and teachers. But there are also some intriguing indicators of the way forward.

There are at least three big skill sets that human intelligence copes well with. Skills that technology — like artificial intelligence — is currently struggling with and may always struggle with.

I've started referring to them in this way: Giving a hug, Solving a mystery, Telling a story.

Giving a hug: By that I mean empathy, collaboration, communication and leadership skills.

Solving a mystery: A computer program can investigate any question. But you need a person to actually generate a question. Curiosity is the starting point for innovation—sometimes called "problem finding."

Telling a story: Finding what's relevant in a sea of data. Applying values, ethics or morals to a situation. And the creative application of aesthetic principles.

Jobs that require routine interactions — processing a mortgage application, say — are being automated. 

Jobs that require non-routine interpersonal and analytical interactions — producing a personalized financial plan for a client, say — are on the rise.

The focus of school, therefore, should be on a "breadth of skills." Academics are necessary, but not sufficient. The list includes such things as teamwork, critical thinking, communication, persistence and creativity.

Kids need to be adaptable, work with others, and have a thirst for learning if they're going to be lifelong learners. Adaptability is required to keep up with the increasing pace of change. Ease in working with others is important in a world that's increasingly interconnected, and where diverse skill sets are required for all sorts of tasks, from launching a business to cleaning up a river.

And lifelong learning is necessary to thrive in a new economy with demands that change all the time

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