The art of seeing (Part II) The Practice

part one      part three      afterthought

learning at the Brooklyn Museum - photo: Trevor Little

Last weekend I sat on a plane from Dallas-Fort Worth to Michigan, next to a young (11-year-old?) woman traveling 'unaccompanied' from her new home in Dallas to her old home and her (now divorced) father. To overcome the loud twenty-something women behind us who were declaring the small plane "unsafe" and "very scary," we talked. She loved flying. She was going to watch The Polar Express for the "hundredth time" on her little DVD player. She was looking forward to swimming in Lake Michigan. And Texas schools were both "much much bigger" and "much much easier" than what she had attended in Michigan. "Fifth grade there was the same as third grade [in Michigan]," she declared. "I'd done everything before."

A few days before I'd watched an 8-year-old girl climb a massive climbing wall, bottom to top. It was a dramatic lesson for me in perseverance, in mentoring, in scaffolding, in courage.

Emma's Climb. Copper Mountain, Colorado (yes, the room had only a plywood "Murphy Bed")

And yesterday I talked to three boys hunting turtles and tadpoles along Pine Creek just north of Holland, Michigan. We looked at the tiny legs emerging on the tadpoles, and wondered at how turtles could be both so fast and so slow.

I like to watch. I love to watch children and I love to watch learning. So I watch these things everywhere. At skateboard parks and on summer sidewalks. In parks and along beaches. In stores and on playing fields. In front of houses and in restaurants. Anywhere. Everywhere.

As I said in Part I of this sequence, education and capitalism have worked very hard to stop us from seeing as complete humans. We literally live in a world where "very smart" people go around insisting that they are only capable of single focus - that they cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. "Attention" - in the Protestant, Capitalist, Rationalist world we live in - means staring at one thing, one person, handling only a single idea or experience at a time. You can't - the experts in The New York Times and on NPR insist - love the wind on your skin and appreciate the music of the incoming tide as you read Byron to the one you are very focused on getting into a highly intimate situation with. The brain, these "smart folks" tell you, can only do one thing at a time.

This is, of course, nonsense. It is the kind of thinking which occurs when people fall into the "science" of measurement completely, and stop observing.

When I observe a school I start by watching how I, and how kids, approach it. I watch how the corridors operate, both when filled with movement and (if) when empty. Empty corridors during a school day speak loudly to me. So do classrooms with one kind of seating, one kind of lighting, or one "teaching wall." I watch the feet of kids in a class. I watch them fidget. I listen to how they talk to each other. I need to see cafeterias and gyms. I need to see from under desks. I listen for the roar of air-handling systems and the buzz of fluorescent lights. I look at hallway and classroom bulletin boards to see if student work is student-designed/student-organized or assignment-compliant. I look at things like references to honor rolls and athletics and ask if all kids are honored or "Lord of the Flies" "choirs" are being created. I listen for the noise of learning. I sniff for the scents of physical activity. I, unlike Marzano and McRel, constantly look for engagement.

This multipli-focused kind of observation helps me to begin to deep map a school.

But the linearity and single-focus of traditional education has, perhaps, robbed you of, or severely limited, your human observation skills. Tens of thousands of hours of single subject lessons, of staring at teachers, of conference sessions divided into "tracks," have stunted the human abilities you had before you entered school. So, if you feel out of practice, here are a few ideas:

Eavesdrop: It's a lesson I've used for fiction writing, but it is essential for learning to observe - getting better at eavesdropping. Sit in a coffee shop, a restaurant, an airport, a park, and listen deeply to the conversations around you. This is how I worked on writing dialogue. I didn't want to sound like some authors where characters make little speeches. I wanted to know both how humans speak and what humans know.

So you need to learn to hear students (and teachers, and the community) when they are not speaking to you, when they think you are not listening, especially when you are not framing the limits of the conversation with your questions. And you can go out, have coffee, and practice this summer.

Look for something you haven't looked for before in a place you've been a million times: Avner Segall, a great Teacher Ed prof who I had for qualitative methods suggested this. So, for his class, I spent about three hours one Saturday watching people check out at Meijer. I was looking for how they interacted with the cashiers and with others in line.

This will build your skills for looking for differing things. Suppose you watched a classroom focused on which students were uncomfortable, or which kids were most frustrated with their technology (often their pens, pencils, paper, and books), or which kids didn't rush out to recess? What might you learn?

What is happening here? Really...

Stare: We're not supposed to do this in America, but you really need to learn how. You need to be able to stare deeply at a group of people and pull in all that you see. From clothing to hand positions, from movement to voice modulation, from body language to eye contact. You need to be able to see your students in all of these details, and a million more.

But you'll need to practice this. Perhaps begin in places where anonymity is easy - sport, the beach, a concert. Then move on up to the streetcorner, the playground, the bus or train.

Talk to strangers: Never pass up the chance to hear a new world view. I have learned from many people, perhaps most importantly from my "spousal equivalent" (a Gary Stager term), how to talk to anyone, anywhere. How to really listen to waiters and the people who help me through airports, cops I meet and people sitting nearby in parks, kids I run into and parents I overhear talking about education.

This is essential. We cannot "talk among ourselves" and learn the world. We have to open ourselves up and let the world in.

At EduCon 2010 Pam Moran and I entered Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy and looked in ways I think many others do not. We did this not because we don't think SLA is a good school - it is a great school - and we did it not because SLA chooses its students when most public schools cannot - there is a place for these "chosen one" schools, from SLA to Bronx Science, however little they tell us about strategies for public education. We did it because everyone in every school needs to do this, because all of us can always get better.

So at SLA we noticed the "Apple branding" of the school. We noticed the "No students on elevator" sign. We asked the very smart white-coated students helping with coffee in the school's library if they had coffee and food in the library during the school day. We talked to students about grades and motivation. We asked why the girls never had time to play on the ping-pong table. We wondered why some of the science equipment looked so dusty and was piled up in big heaps. We wandered through the theatre and asked the students about plays. We asked kids to show us their favorite classroom, and asked why they thought it was the best. We hung out with the student tech team.

Did our survey describe the entirety of the school? Of course not. But I think it did add to Chris Lehmann's deep map of SLA, and for a great school leader, the deeper the map, the better the school becomes.

So we need to see. We need to deep map. And we need to learn to pull the world into our brain in the most "ADHD-way" possible.

And then - next installment - we need to understand how our "educational reformers" are not doing that.

- Ira Socol

The art of seeing

part two    part three     afterthought

How do you see a classroom? What do you see when you look at a “learning space”? What questions do you ask when you watch someone teach? Or watch someone learn?

I sat in a conference session recently and listened to Matthew Kuhn explain how a “Marzano-Approved,” “Bill Gates-Loved,” “Arne Duncan-Endorsed,” iPad app from McRel could allow you to understand pedagogy in your school while “observing” for “three to five minutes.” Well, not actually observing, more like staring down at your high-gloss iPad screen while sitting in the back of a classroom. (for a look at Marzano's research regarding products he is paid to research, see Jon Becker)

Where's this on Marzano's checklist?

Mr. Kuhn promised “accuracy,” “reliability,” “validity,” and many other buzzwords of America’s corporate elite – from Jeb “You can buy my brothers school stuff” Bush to Joel “Give me your kids Money” Klein, from Salman “Learn via my home lectures!” Kahn to Bill “I copied all my major projects” Gates, from Michelle “Tape their mouths shut” Rhee to Arne “I hate schools, teachers, and students” Duncan. He also promised his that his company’s checklist for teacher evaluation was “non-evaluative.” And it is.

It is every bit as non-evaluative as the above paragraph.

There is a deep misconception which runs through the world of our educational policy “leaders.” It is a misconception based in enlightenment philosophy and the scientific management systems which grew up during the second industrial revolution. It is a very dangerous disbelief based in a sad underestimation of the human species and a specifically trained inability to actually see.

This misconception is the belief that human behavior and experience can be reduced to a numerical scale.

"We can't measure engagement" - Matthew Kuhn

It is the belief that you can take me and Michelle Rhee and add us together, then divide by two, and come up with an “average” educational change advocate.

It is the belief that you end up with an “objective truth” when you take a specifically chosen set of questions and determine that there will be a correct answer to those questions.

“You watch the video of this teacher,” Kuhn told us, “then discuss what you see at your tables, and then I’ll tell you the right answer.”

Oh my.

It will come as a shock to Mr. Gates, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Khan, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and others, but I’m here to tell you that quantitative analysis of your school will always tell you what the “researcher” wants to hear. And that analysis has no more validity than if you let anyone wander your building and report on your school. You will have a minimal snapshot, a story framed by the personal beliefs, experiences, and grudges of the person who chose the questions and the person who decided how, when, and where, to collect the “data.”

Imagine: I am at a gathering and I ask everyone, “how tall are you?” “how much do you weigh?” “can you explain Einstein’s theory of relativity?” And I ask these questions at the start of the event. Or, if I ask – after everyone has had three drinks, “who’s your favorite poet?” “what island would you most want to live on?” “can you explain how Liverpool beat Milan in the 2005 Champions League Final in Istanbul?”

Would I get the same view of the guests?

The comparison to education is not ridiculous. The questions asked, the checklist provided, the rubric you’ve created, will always limit your ability to observe. And the measurements you report will always limit your imagination and your ability to create and change.

“Where’s the checkbox for “kids drawing on the floor?”’ I asked the conference later. Where’s the checkbox for “student movement”? for “kids had seating choices”? for “students seemed really happy”? As Tomaz Lasic once asked, “Where’s the tickbox for “student smiled for the first time today”?

Those who only see the checklist will never be artists, or creators, or even valued observers

Because if that’s not on your checklist, you will not see it. Surely not in your five minute “power walkthrough.” And if you don’t see those things, and a million more things not on Marzano’s checklists, you will not see your school.

You have to learn the art of deep mapping. You have to learn the art of “ADHD vision.” You have to learn to see a holistic world made of many tiny elements. You have to learn again to see.

“This was hard,” one school administrator said after Pam Moran and I had sent a conference session out to try “ADHD vision” during a 15-minute walk, “I really don’t know how to observe people.”

She is not alone. The ability to observe humanity is taken away from us by a combination of our North American views of privacy and our belief in magical numbers. We think it impolite to look too closely at each other. We distrust our human vision and have been taught to rely on statistical models.

New York Mayor John Lindsay walks unplowed Queens streets

When I was young a huge snowstorm hit New York City. It took hours after the snow began for plows to begin rolling, and the result was a mess that took weeks to clean up. I still remember the city official on the news, “We can’t send the plows out without a report from the weather bureau,” he said. “Weather bureau?” the Sanitation Union leader laughed in response, “all you had to do was look out the window.”

And today, while Gates and Duncan count, they have taught us to not look out that window. No Child Left Behind tells us tons of things which everyone knows are not true, but our policies, our editorials, and our political campaigns keep claiming – in John Lindsay administration terms – that “no storm is coming.” Duncan says that NCLB will show next year that 82% of our schools are failing – which is obviously absurd – and that he will let you escape the failing label if you enrich his friends by buying their reform models. And “everyone” sits back and lets that untruth stand. Duncan says, high-stakes tests should determine teacher salaries while not forcing teachers to “teach to the test,” and gets away with this observable lie. From one end of America to another politicians claim that both “teachers make all the difference” and that “teacher training does not matter” (Teach for America) and fewer news media call anyone on that crazed contradiction than called Donald Rumsfeld on his duality of “Iraq is filled with weapons of mass destruction ready to be used in 15 minutes,” and, “Iraq will be very easy to conquer and control, and we need very few troops.”

On the other hand, none of the numbers we have show the brilliant, creative work being generated by kids in great classrooms. None of the numbers show the teachers struggling everyday to overcome America’s embarrassing cultures of poverty-acceptance and child disregard. None of the numbers show that system-changing adaptations – open classrooms, multiage education, studio-style schools, project-based learning, passion-based learning – lead to kids with more adaptable human skills.

Angels in America, the work of another victim of whole language instruction

Observation, however, shows that the much maligned progressive education of the Baby Boomers and early Gen Xers produced the world's most inventive economy. The group without rigorous testing, the "whole language victims," the "new math victims," produced everything from micro-computers to Google, from effective solar power to Pixar, from Foursquare to Burning Man.

Deep Mapping

So we must stop being blinded by our incredibly limited view of "science." Rather, we must learn to see again, to see widely and complexly. To build our own deep maps of the people, places, and experiences before us. You cannot describe the experience of a middle school English class without knowing what happened in the corridor before class began, or what happened the night before at home. You cannot describe the work coming out of a tenth grade math class without understanding the full experience of students and their parents with mathematics to that point. You cannot tell me anything about reading among seven-year-olds without deeply considering the brain function and homelife of each student. And you cannot tell me about the "performance" of any school if you have not deep-mapped it to include a million data points - most of which cannot be charted or averaged or statistically normed.

Human observation and deep mapping are hard, but hardly impossible. These are skills which we all had before school began, and which we must recapture. We'll start by putting down our checklists... and in the next post, we will start to practice...

- Ira Socol