I started the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell this weekend--and not a moment too soon. The chapter I'm currently reading meshes perfectly with something that happened at school last week.
In the chapter "The Trouble with Genius, part 2," Gladwell discusses the way middle class children are raised differently from working class and poor children. It's a phenomenon I've read about before, but Gladwell, as usual, sums up the research with accessible panache. Long-story-short: middle class children are raised to take control of their lives from an early age. They are trained to express themselves clearly and not be afraid to shape a situation to their liking, whenever possible. The message that they get from their parents is that they have every right to speak up, be heard and make themselves understood. As a result, they are comfortable in a wide variety of highly structured situations and able to engage in the world on equal footing with those around them, even adults in most cases. Working class children, in contrast, are trained by their parents to respect authority, accept the world as they find it and adopt a position of distance in unfamiliar situations. Both ways of looking at the world are learned traits linked to social class, and have nothing to do with genetics, race or personality type. Neither is morally superior. However, given the way our society is structured, the abilities middle class children learn provide them with an incredible advantage throughout their lives.
Which brings me to last week at school. Half of Wednesday and all of Thursday were given over to student-led conferences, which are exactly what they sound like. The students amassed a portfolio of their work done over the course of the year in all classes (including electives and PE), reflected on it and then shared it with their parents in a conference-like setting. All told, they spent between 35-60 minutes talking their parents through their work. At the end, parent and child set a goal for the child for the remainder of the year. The parents wrote their kid an encouraging letter, and the kids filled out a post-conference reflection. Then they went home.
As a teacher, I spent class time helping the kids get their portfolios ready and giving feedback on reflections. Ocanada, my math/science counterpart, helped them figure out what they were going to say. But when it came time for the conferences, my role was to make sure everyone knew where to sit and fetch things like pencils and Kleenex as needed. The kids were in charge. One boy's father tried to grab his portfolio early on in the conference (in order to page through it at his own pace). The boy grabbed it back with a polite but firm reminder, "This is my conference, Dad." Most parents were happy to go along with the program. It was cool to walk around and hear them talking to their kids about their work.
Even before I read Gladwell, I knew that we dedicated 1.5 days of school for student-led conferences as more than a fancy show-and-tell. There is an immense value in having students reflect on their own work and brainstorm ways to improve. But that's not all. Student-led conference mesh perfectly with the middle class parenting discussed in Gladwell (and pioneered by the educational sociologist Annette Lareau). The kids are in charge, presenting their 6th grade essays and stories in a barely disguised dress rehearsal for future presentations to professors, committees and bosses. The parents (taking the role of evaluators) are totally engaged in helping their kids develop a confident presentation style, and showed this by asking questions, making comments and reviewing each piece carefully. No one grumbled about the kids missing a day of school. The parents and kids (thanks to the response of their parents) knew the day hadn't been wasted.
The question now becomes, how transferable is the idea of student-led conferences to schools that serve working class and poor children? Kids can be trained to do just about anything. But in order to make these conferences successful, schools will have to spend time a bit differently (collecting portfolios, spending time reflecting). It gets to the heart of something I've been thinking about all year, and that is, what are the best ways to make available middle class ways of interacting in the world (the ones that provide a later advantage) to working class/poor children? How do you pick and choose? Of course, there is an endless array of social issues involved in educating a child and only a few take place within a school building. But what should take place within that school building? Are student-led conferences something worth transferring? Is this perhaps a better method than going to great lengths to enact the more traditional parent-teacher conferences? (See the post"On the List of Things To Ponder" from November 22, 2008, for details about getting low-income parents to attend conferences.)
One thing that is undeniably true about student-led conferences (as opposed to parent-teacher conferences) is that parents and kids leave the room together and most of the time they are smiling. The students are completely involved in the discussion of their own work, and they are the ones leading the conversation. The set up alone puts parents in the role of supporter and observer, which is really all they can be, especially as their children grow up. They won't be leading their offsprings' lives, after all. Student-led conferences strike me as authentic in a way that kids are rarely asked to be in school--not just as prep for future board-room presentations, but because they are taking full responsibility for their own labor, habits and outcomes. I hear people complaining about how kids today are asked to grow up too fast. Then I hear complaints that kids aren't given enough real responsibility. Student-led conferences seem to be a happy medium. Kids are asked to present their thoughts on their own work to a receptive audience. What comes out of these conversations is measurable only in what the kid him/herself puts back into future achievements as a result of reflecting and speaking about what s/he did before. In the end, it sounds a lot like how we all learn, regardless of where we come from.
8 years ago
2 comments:
I enjoyed this piece... made me think about our experiences.I had a couple of thoughts about it.
1) I think it's also cultural... a friend of mine who is your age and middle class- and Korean-American- was certainly NOT brought up to question authority, use her voice, etc. etc, and saw that as being very typical of others in the Korean, if not Asian, community. We had quite a conversation about Cece when my friend met Cece at age 13...
2) also perhaps somewhat related to geography/culture even within the US? We experienced great student-led conferences here with the kids, but not in Cincinnati. A clear value in Cincinnati is keeping your head down; not standing out, not questioning, respecting authority. Accept things as they are and adapt to them; don't expect to change them. Roman Catholic influence ("all change must take place at a glacial pace") in that very RC town? I don't know. But an example of it is P&G building their international headquarters there in a huge, low-lying complex with matching twin short, round towers (aka the ta-tas) rather than one big, tall building like folks do everyplace else. (what would P&G build in Dubai?)
All 5 of you were raised- in both households- to be independent and willing to question/take on authority, and you all show different ability/willingness to do so. Maybe that's where personality comes in?
I'm posting this from anonymous just because I can't, for the life of me, remember my google account info. Sigh.
I read your piece on taking pride in your work, thought about it a lot, and would have answered it if your mom didn't beat me to it and express my sentiments better than I would have. Reading this suggests something else.
You should get some measure of satisfaction that while on your sabbatical with the middle/upper class, you are learning a lot even if you aren't contributing as much to the world as you normally do. Once you return to your vocation, not only will you be recharged from your burnout, but you will have better perspective and hopefully a few new techniques in your arsenal that you will be able to adapt/modify to your circumstances.
And even giving less-than-full effort, I'm sure you are having a positive impact on your kids. Just because they'd be fine without you doesn't mean they aren't better off for your labors.
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As for your actual question here, I don't see why this technique wouldn't be completely portable to your poor, urban kids. The ability to collect your achievements (be they great or meager) and present them to your advantage is quite handy. You're developing, among other things, the skills needed to extract more money from their future employers.
So the main thing these some of your former kids are missing to do this exercise is parents that give a damn, correct? Every kid (and everybody really) needs someone whose opinion they value enough that they can be accountable to them. If parents can't fill that role, someone else has to. In fact, most of us outgrow our parents at some point and need to find someone else to mentor us. Some of these kids will have to do it earlier in life than others. The mentor could be anybody (besides you, who play a different role in the exercise) whose opinion the kids value--babysitter, uncle, grandma, ex-teacher, nearly-adult sibling, coach, whatever. You don't want to cut parents out of the loop (ie you don't want to relieve them of their obligations), but kids need to be encouraged to look elsewhere if need be. Who knows--maybe seeing somebody else step up for their kids will shame some parents into stepping up themselves.
And I don't see why a reluctance to evaluate oneself (whether culturally-driven, class-driven, or whatever) should dissuade you from doing this. Indeed, if kids are lacking in this area, that's all the more reason to develop it, even if they aren't good at it at first.
One question I did have is how well the kids identify their own shortcomings in this format. I suspect that some of them need help on this. Most grownups do as well. Without undercutting the concept of this being student-led, you do need to be directive sometimes towards the end of your meetings.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of this scheme (and most leadership methods) is going to rest on the quality of the goals. A goal is not unlike a scientific theory. To be scientific, a theory should be testable and able to be falsified. Likewise, a goal needs to be testable and able to be failed. In fact, if you're setting the bar correctly, goals will occasionally not be met. Success can't exist except in the shadow of failure. That's one reason sports are so good for kids. They break them out of the "everybody's always a winner" mentality into which it's easy to fall if you're lazy.
The secondary pillar of success is feedback. Your progress reports to the kids and their parents (and substitute mentors) have to be squarely focused on the goals set.
If I were structuring this from scratch, I'd probably follow the model the army uses for counseling
--an initial session within 30 days to set goals (just long enough to gauge your kids capabilities). The kids should be asked to show up with their goals for the year--what they'd like to achieve. Classroom prep should be maybe a 30 minute (or whatever time you can afford) discussion of what constitutes a proper goal. You should show up with your own goals. Allow 15-20 minutes for the discussions.
--one midyear feedback. Pretty much exactly what you're doing, but the presentation should be organized around the goals. I would have the first 1/2 of the session student-led. Then a couple minutes of teacher feedbacks--your evaluation of how the student is measuring up. The remainder should be a discussion of how the student could improve (where he's falling short) and setting new goals/modifying old ones.
--one final evaluation, which should be nearly exactly the same format as the mid-year. And you really want to keep exactly the same mentality in my final evaluations as I do in my mid-terms. Most superiors are much more critical and constructive in a mid-term feedback than in a final because they are still working with a subordinate. This often turns the final evaluation into a useless bunch of everybody's-a-winner, self-congratulatory nonsense. You need to keep in mind that your final evaluation isn't really final--in a perfect world, it's just a precursor to the next teacher's initial. There is still room to improve and goals to set.
All this takes a lot of precious time, but none of it is wasted by any means. In addition to the ostensible purpose of improving and focusing student performance over the year, the kids work on communications skills (which you note are sorely needed) and pick up leadership skills as well. If leadership and goal-setting don't fall into social studies, I'm not sure where they would.
Mrs Parr spent a couple days with us talking about the mechanics of making decisions in life. I don't know that that was on any curriculum. But the fact that I remember 20-something years later means it probably was worth the time.
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