Student Development: How Essential School Practices and Designs Can Help

Middle Schools Reflect Essential School Ideas

The past decade's move from "junior high schools" to "middle schools" came from a growing understanding of young adolescents' developmental needs, informed by the groundbreaking 1989 "Turning Points" report from the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development. Now new partnerships are building between Essential schools and the middle school reform movement, with support from the Turning Points Middle Grades School State Policy Initiative. In Boston, Carnegie funds CES's regional Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) to work with 16 of Boston's 23 middle schools as they make changes like these, which reflect both Turning Points philosophy and Essential School principles:

• Flexible schedules, groupings, academic focus, and learning opportunities.
• Small communities of learners coached by teams of teachers, creating a sense of belonging, a feeling among kids that their teachers know and watch out for them, and a diverse group of peers who know each other well and develop trust, a sense of safety, and the ability to learn together.
• Advisory groups that meet often enough so every student has a teacher who knows him or her well, fostering a school culture of decency and mutual respect.
• Academic work that crosses subject-area lines, and the time for teachers to meet and plan that work together so that it meets their students' needs.
• Structures that keep decision-making on curriculum and scheduling with teachers and kids in the team and in the building.
• Partnerships with families that treat them as allies in decisions about kids' lives and education.
• Connections with the community, as a learning resource and a place where students can actively contribute, collaborate, and connect academic learning with the things that are concrete to them.

Do Boys and Girls Need Different Things in School?

Research interest has grown over the last decade in how schools and families can provide different kinds of support to help both girls and boys develop self-confidence and thrive academically. Studies by the American Association of University Women, for example, observed that teachers call on boys more in class, give them positions of more responsibility, and the like. And a body of psychological research indicates that girls learn and interact in a more collaborative, less hierarchical and competitive way, which traditional classrooms may not support.

Schools do poorly by boys in other ways, the data show. Boys do outnumber girls by about three to one in the top ten percent of math and science performers, a major University of Chicago study found, and in some science and vocational aptitude tests, no girls scored in the top three percent. But the Chicago study also shows that boys predominate at the bottom of the heap, especially in reading and writing, where the lowest performers outnumber girls by a margin of two to one. Harvard University psychiatrist William S. Pollack argues that most schools fail to accommodate boys' different learning styles, and shunt them disproportionately into special needs classes. And the college population has been steadily tilting in favor of female students. Twenty years ago more boys than girls went to college; now, 58 percent of high school male graduates make it to college, compared to 67 percent of females.

Some Essential schools with an interest in meeting their students' varying developmental needs are looking for ways to adapt their structures and teaching practices to be more appropriate for both genders. The law frowns on separate-sex classes, making it difficult, say, to have a math class aimed at raising girls' self-confidence and skills. So how can schools support girls' needs for quiet, collaborative settings, boys' needs for high levels of action, and both genders' need to express themselves with sensitivity and confidence?

Perhaps answers will come from the kind of individual and small-group activities made possible by lower student loads; perhaps from outside the academic classroom, through advisory-type activities. Philadelphia's Academy for the Middle Years, for example, has successfully instituted separate lunch areas for boys and girls. "It started as a pragmatic response to the lunchroom's physical layout," says principal Holly Perry. "Then we realized many of our lunchroom problems were disappearing with the change. Boys want to eat quickly and get out to do something active; the girls tend to linger and talk with each other."

Boys and girls aren't the only area where such equity issues arise in the classroom. A growing research base is challenging teachers to vary their approaches to support the academic development of children with different racial and cultural backgrounds as well, an issue to be addressed in a coming issue of HORACE.

Confronting the Moral Questions Within Academic Disciplines

Across the disciplines, teachers tend to quickly dismiss politically and morally charged topics when they arise. But how can we promote critical thinking if we are shy about tackling our critical issues?

How can teachers help high school students explore moral and ethical questions with the thoughtfulness necessary for a democratic society to function fully? How can they build academic courses and a school-wide culture around questions that really matter, that push students to consider what it means to live a good, meaningful life, to promote justice, or to contribute to the well-being of society?

In this climate of "covering the content," it isn't easy, says CES Director of Research and Professional Development Kathy Simon, so, with funding from the Shinnyo En Founda-tion, the Coalition has launched a new national project to foster that process. The "Essential Moral Questions" project will work with Essential school teachers to devise academic curricula that pay close attention to both the intellectual and the moral elements of these subject areas. It will help them develop discussion-leading skills to address such questions, and to foster a school culture that promotes in-depth discussion of important moral issues.

"As a nation, the culture of our classrooms is particularly adverse to serious exploration of moral issuesóindeed, of anything potentially controversial or not easily tested," says Simon, whose research at Stanford University explored this subject. Almost all classroom conversation between teachers and students, research shows, involves the transmission and recitation of names, dates, and formulae; across the disciplines, teachers tend to quickly dismiss politically or morally charged topics when they arise. Even important moral and ethical concepts like "equity," "freedom," and "civic responsibility," Simon observes, are likely to be taught by delivering definitions, memorizing specific texts, drilling in the structures and formulae, and the like. And such topics as slavery, the "American dream," civil rights, immigration, crime and punishment, and organized labor are most often approached as chunks of information to be ingested, not living, complex questions to be explored.

When controversial topics do occasionally arise, Simon says, they are typically debated in ways that drive students into polarized positions, with little opportunity to come to understand or respect the opinions of their classmates. "Most students graduate from high school," she says, "with little or no practice in thinking carefully, compassionately, or creatively about the key moral issues with which our society continues to grapple."

For example, teachers can open up academic discourse on moral questions like these, which require students to use substantive evidence to form and discuss their opinions:

• How should a society distribute its wealth?
• What, if anything, constitutes a just war?
• Who, if anyone, is an "outsider" in American society? How do the experiences of an outsider differ from those of an insider?
• What forces give rise to cruelty among human beings?
• How has race mattered, and how does it matter, in America?
• What does it mean to be a "criminal"? Has this definition varied from society to society? What is society's role in dealing with criminals?
• What scientific or technological discoveries have had important impact on the social world? Why and how?
• Are there scientific discoveries that we simply should not pursue?
• Is the natural world, by definition, good? Or is it morally neutral? Which sorts of changes in the natural world, if any, are appropriate for human beings to make?

Even when teachers do design curriculum around questions with moral content, the pedagogy remains very difficult. How does one conduct responsible, probing discussions around controversial issues in the public school context? How does one discuss topics about which there may be strong disagreement, yet honor the diverse perspectives held by students, their families, and the wider community? Most teachers find it easier, research shows, simply to refrain from talking in depth about controversial topicsóa practice that may hamper students' moral and intellectual development. As Columbia University education professor Nel Noddings observes, schools cannot hope to promote critical thinking if they are shy about tackling criticalóand often controversialóissues.

As CES commits itself to democracy and equity in its new Tenth Common Principle, new moral questions present themselves. What does it mean to "model democratic practices"? Is democracy a particular form of government, a style of discussion, a way of behaving day to day? What does it mean to "challenge all forms of inequity"? Does this require people in the school to take certain kinds of political actions? Is it ever possible that the demands of democracy and the demands of equity could be in conflict? Not just classrooms but whole school communities, Simon urges, must learn to discuss such morally charged issues.

Restitution: A Coaching Approach to Discipline

Asking "Why did you do that?" or "How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?" only directs attention to student behavior problems, makes them defensive, and encourage them to produce excuses for their failure, says Norma True Spurlock, a counselor at the University of Florida's P. K. Yonge Developmental Research School, headed by CES Executive Board president Fran Vandiver. Instead, she helps teachers use a more positive system of restitution, which focuses on solutions, recognizing the student's need to belong. "All behavior reflects a student's values," she says. "It's chosen, purposeful, and internally motivated." She recommends asking this sequence of questions:

ï What do we believe about . . . [respecting others? respecting property? being on time and on task? being where we're supposed to be?] This ties the student's behavior to the shared values the school holds, and reminds him to do the right thing because it's right, not to avoid pain.

ï What problems did you cause for others? (Looks at the consequences of one's actions.)

ï What can you do to fix this? (Focuses on the solution; restores any damage caused. Offers options: fix; replace; do something for the class; pay back with money, time, labor, etc.)

ï You had a reason for doing this. What did you need? (Recognizes that behavior is purposeful and internally motivated.)

ï Can you think of a way to do this that won't cause anyone else a problem? (Focuses on the solution.)

ï You're not the only one who has ever made a mistake. Do you want to be the kind of person who fixes his or her mistakes? (Recognizes that behavior is chosen and can be changed.)

ï What can you do to fix this? What part are you willing to do? (Focuses on a positive solution that requires time, energy, and effort from the offender; restores self-esteem; builds relationships. "I'm sorry" is not enough.)

ï Do you think this is a place where people care about you? (Emphasizes need to belong.)

ï Will you think about it? (Emphasizes student's choice.)

From 16 to 20, Student Development Demands a Different Kind of Schooling

"The school was structurally incapable of taking me seriously," one student at a well regarded suburban high school said.

Schools often dismally fail the developmental needs of young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty, concluded a year-long study just completed by the Coalition of Essential Schools. Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and led by Kathy Simon, CES's Director of Research and Professional Development, the "Sixteen to Twenty Project" looked critically at current educational practice in late high school and early college, and came up with provocative suggestions and "design principles" for how it should change in five broad areas: college admissions, standards, curriculum, pedagogy, and institutional size.

Even high schools and colleges with good reputations, the report concluded, rarely offer the intellectual stimulation or the room for social and emotional development that young adults need. Anonymous among thousands of others and rarely known well by even one adult, students have little choice but to sit and listen to class material that has little resonance with their own experience or questions. Graded and ranked against their classmates according to tests that reward cramming more than deep thought, they are sorted and stratified ostensibly by ability, but most often by race and class. A significant portion drop out virtually unnoticed.

Yet throughout the early 1990's, approximately 65 percent of all high school seniors held jobs for pay; the majority of these students worked at these jobs more than 20 hours a week. More than 4 percent of young women from 15 to 19 give birth every year, and approximately 13 percent of young people between 14 and 24 are arrested. Fragile and dependent these young adults are not, yet few receive from their schools the respect and responsibility that could inspire discipline and ambition rather than lethargy and apathy. "The school was structurally incapable of taking me seriously," said one student of her well-regarded, wealthy suburban high school.

What would help? The problem lies in school design and policy, this report asserted. In particular:

ï School structures should allow close, personal, regular contact between young adults and older mentors. This stepómost effectively achieved by creating smaller schoolsówill have academic as well as social and emotional effects. "Students become motivated to achieve high standards when trusted adults in their lives deem them important," the report concluded. "It is virtually inconceivable that students would do high quality work in the absence of close-in, caring coaches to provide regular encouragement, guidance, and feedback." Truly high standards and strict accountability come about not through legal mandates, it argued, but through respectful human relationships. When schools are small enough to know their students well, teaching and learning improve and institutions better provide the supports and services students need.

ï The work students do at this age should have a place in the world, feeding their idealistic sense that they can have an impact on real problems and answer real needs. In combination with an intellectually rigorous curriculum, "real world" work is crucial to the intellectual and social development of young adults. And because so many students have jobs outside school, the report noted, those jobs simply must nurture their intellectual and social growth. School should provide a place where students may come back and reflect on their experiences in the world.

ï In school and out, students at this age should work with people both older and younger than themselves. "We typically warehouse 2,000 fourteen to eighteen year olds together, away from adults, then wonder why they are so susceptible to peer pressure," noted one contributor to the report. Yet adolescents act at once more adultóresponsible, diligent, considerateóand more childlikeócurious, enthusiastic, jovialówhen kept "out of packs." And they rise to the occasion when positioned to act as mentors to youngsters, colleagues of adults, or sources of support to the elderly.

ï Rigid age-grading must go. If standards are to guide student promotion, schools and colleges must seriously rethink the current age-graded system, establishing more fluid and contextual boundaries within and between institutions. Students might receive college credit for working in their family business; high schools might provide close tutoring support to the 20-year-old student who needs that environment; high school students might take college courses during their junior and senior years.

ï College admissions criteria should clearly promote performance-based assessments and learning that takes place outside the conventional classroom. Current systems reward memorization, not exploring ideas or making connections between information, ideas, and actions outside school; tests and grades pit classmates against one another with very high stakes. And though expeditionary learning, apprenticeships, and other "real world" experiences profoundly influence the growth of young adults, they rarely appear on traditional transcripts. If college admissions offices made clear to high schools and their students that demonstrating their learning through performance, not tests, carried important weight, they could have important effects on secondary schools' structures and classroom practices.

Moral Questions Schools Should Ask Themselves

"To find the core of a school, don't look at its rulebook or even its mission statement," Ted and Nancy Sizer advise in their forthcoming book, The Students Are Watching. "Look at the way the people in it spend their time, how they relate to each other, how they tangle with ideas. Look for the contradictions between words and practice, with the fewer the better. Try to estimate the frequency and the honesty of its deliberations."A school's quest for greater consistency between its words and its actions should start, they propose, with questions such as these:

• Is more expected of both students and teachers than is possible to do well?
• Do conditions in the school allow each student to be known well?
• How does this school pace itself? Is there time during the school day to work, time to reflect, and time to rest?
• Are the expectations for students and teachers clear?
• Are the incentives and opportunities for clearly demonstrated work clear and pervasive within a school?
• In its presentation and recommendation of students for college admission and job placement, does the school absolutely insist on accuracy as well as advocacy?

Source: Horace. Vol. 15, #3. January 1999.
Publication Year: 1999
Publisher: CES National
Type: Horace Feature, Horace Sidebar
School Level: All
Issue: 15.3
Focus Area: Classroom Practice
STRAND: Classroom Practice: instruction
Curriculum: Essential Questions
Instruction: Personalization