Texas Teachers of Tomorrow

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Texas Teachers of Tomorrow

• WOW

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Texas Teachers of Tomorrow

• Using the WOW Framework to Become a WOW Teacher

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Schools cannot be made great by great teacher
performance. They will only be made great by
great student performance.Phillip Schlechty
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Pressure to Improve Student Performance

• Work on Students
• Work on Teachers
• Work on the Work

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Work on the Students

• Teachers have had little success.
• You can cajole them or threaten them and
  sometimes get compliance, but it does not produce
  the commitment needed to perform at high levels.
• In the long run, working on the students hasnt
  worked.

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Work on the Teachers

• Putting more pressure on the teachers doesnt
  work.
• Most teachers are already doing all they know how
  to do.

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Work on the Work

• Working on the Work
• The WOW Framework
• The key to school success is to be found in
  identifying or creating engaging schoolwork for
  students.

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The Nature of Schoolwork

• Work is a goal-oriented activity and therefore is
  a purposeful activity. It is intended to produce
  something of use.
• Schoolwork refers to the tasks, activities, and
  experiences that teachers design for students and
  those that teachers encourage students to design
  for themselves.

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• Working on the Work entails teachers purposefully
  creating, designing, identifying, or otherwise
  making available to students authentically
  engaging activities, programs, tasks, and
  assignments.

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Basic Assumptions

• Differences in commitment and attention produce
  differences in student engagement.
• Differences in the level and type of engagement
  affect directly the effort that students expend
  on school-related tasks.
• Effort affects learning outcomes at least as much
  as does intellectual ability.

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Great teachers are great leaders.
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The primary function of a leader is to inspire
others to do things they might otherwise not do.
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What do you need learn?

• The teacher needs to be skilled in providing
  students with schoolwork that will engage them
  and encourage them to direct their efforts in
  productive ways.

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What is Student Engagement?

• Students are attentivenot just in attendance
• Students stick with the tasks they have been
  assigned or encouraged to undertakethey are
  persistent. They stick with the task until it is
  completed and completed well.
• Students are committed to the task, activity, or
  assignment.

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What is Student Engagement?

• Students invest energy beyond that needed to
  simply get by.
• Students find some inherent value in what he or
  she is being asked to do.
• Students do the task with enthusiasm and
  diligence.

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How do educators get Student Engagement?

• FIRST
• Educators need to be able to assess IF their
  students are engaged and HOW ACTIVELY they are
  engaged.

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• SECOND
• Educators need to invent experiences, tasks,
  activities, assignments that students find
  engaging and that bring them into profound
  interactions(engagement) with content and
  processes.

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Five Levels of Student Engagement

• To see if students are engaged, we need to be
  able to identify the five levels of engagement
• Authentic Engagement
• Ritual Engagement
• Passive Compliance
• Retreatism
• Rebellion

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Authentic Engagement

• The task, activity, or work the student is
  assigned or encouraged to undertake is associated
  with a result or outcome that has clear meaning
  and a relatively immediate value to the student.
  
• These students are committed to work, they
  persist in the work until it is completed well.
• They see value in the work and dont stop when
  difficulties arrives.
• They experience a sense of satisfaction,
  accomplishment, pride, and even delight in their
  work.

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Ritual Engagement

• The immediate end of the assigned work has little
  or no inherent meaning or direct value to the
  student, BUT the student associates it with
  extrinsic outcomes and results that are of value
  to him/her.
• They do what is required because they are
  compliant to authority.
• They meet expectations for work more from
  obedience than from commitment.

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Passive Compliance

• The student is willing to expend whatever effort
  is needed to avoid negative consequences,
  although he or she sees little meaning in the
  tasks assigned or the consequences of doing those
  tasks.
• The students do the minimum to get by.
• They are more concerned with just having their
  work accepted than respected.
• They just want to get by.

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Retreatism

• The student is disengaged from the tasks, expends
  no energy in attempting to comply with the
  demands of the tasks, but does not act in ways
  that disrupt others and does not try to
  substitute other activities for the assigned
  task.
• There are various reasons for the
  retreatuncertain of what is being asked, lack
  the skills to do the task, etc.

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Rebellion

• The student summarily refuses to do the task
  assigned, acts in ways that disrupts others, or
  attempts to substitute tasks and activities to
  which he or she is committed in lieu of those
  assigned or supported by the school or teacher.
• Key words refusal, rebellion, disruption.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHERS
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• By exercising control over curriculum content and
  ensuring that the schoolwork provided is
  engaging, the teacher increases the probability
  that each child will learn what he or she needs
  to learn.

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TEACHERS ARE

• Leaders--and like other leaders, they are known
  more for what they can get others to do, rather
  than what they do themselves.
• Inventors--they are called upon to create
  schoolwork that will produce authentic engagement.

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• The effort students are willing to expend on
  tasks is determined by the level and type of
  engagement the tasks generate. This comes from
  the way the work is designed.

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• The task for the teacher, therefore becomes to
  design work that is responsive to students needs
  and motives, which results in the students
  learning what is intended for them to learn.

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• Excuses
• When thinking of why students cannot or do not do
  assigned tasks, we come up with reasons.
• Too many poor students
• Too many unsupportive parents
• Language barriers
• Economic Status
• While all of these excuses have some validity,
  we still have no control over them.

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What Teachers Cannot Control

• Resources available
• School calendar
• Level of parental involvement
• Socioeconomic Status of Students
• Primary Language
• Learning Readiness

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What Teachers Can Control

• The content of the curriculum that they deliver
  to students
• The qualities and characteristics of tasks
  assigned to students

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To Ensure Proper Focus, Teachers Should.

• Estimate level and types of engagement compare
  on a daily basis.
• Conduct student questionnaire\interviews
• Invite principal and colleagues to assess types
  of engagement.
• Relate patterns of engagement observed to the
  quality of student work.

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WOW Attributes Are.

• Product focus
• Affiliation
• Clear product standards
• Choice
• Protection from adverse consequences for initial
  failures
• Novelty and variety
• Affirmation
• Authenticity

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1 Product Focus

• Link the work with some problem, issue, product,
  performance, or exhibition that students find
  compelling.

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2 Affiliation

• Work that is designed to permit, encourage, and
  support opportunities for students to affiliate
  with others is likely to encourage some students
  to engage the work that otherwise they might not
  find engaging.

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3 Clear Product Standards

• Children and young adults prefer to operate in a
  world where they know what is expected.

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4 Choice

• Choice implies some degree of control over
  events. Individuals who have choice are
  empowered.

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5 Protection from Adverse Consequences for
Initial Failure

• The level of engagement of students is clearly
  affected by the extent to which students have
  opportunities to engage without fear of
  embarrassment, punishment, or an implication of
  personal inadequacy.

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6 Novelty and Variety

• Novelty adds freshness and new life to the tired
  and repetitious.
• Dont get into a teaching rut!

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7 Affirmation

• When significant others see the work that the
  students are doing as valuable it affirms the
  work for the student.

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8 Authenticity

• Authenticity refers to a sense of realness about
  experiences. If they carry real consequences then
  student engagement is likely to increase.
• Exampleclass business.

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Points to Ponder

• All of these attributes are not required in every
  lesson, but are a list of possibilities a teacher
  might want to consider when designing lessons.
• Authentic engagement occurs only when the work is
  designed in a way that it appeals to values and
  needs that are real to the students.

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The important thing is not so much that every
child should be taught, as that every child
should be given the wish to learn.