"Ok, Boomer!" Generational Angst; Generational Leadership

My latest book, 4-Gen Leadership: Thriving in a Multi-gen Workplace, written with Sami Scarpitti, will be released on November 19. Here’s sample of the book from its opening chapter.

“OK, Boomer…”

In November of 2019, this phrase became a generational battle cry when 25 year-old Chloe Swarbrick, a member of the New Zealand Parliament, addressed her fellow parliament members about the dangers of climate change, or more precisely, about their lack of action in preventing it. "In the year 2050, I will be 56 years old. Yet, right now, the average age of this 52nd Parliament is 49 years old," she said, hoping to spur her more senior colleagues into action. As Swarbrick spoke, an older parliament member sitting in the audience began to heckle her. Without pausing, Swarbrick deftly, calmly interjected, “OK, Boomers,” into the middle of a sentence and continued her speech, silencing the heckler - and becoming a viral sensation[1]. Within hours her response was being shown on news stations around the world. Today, it’s been viewed millions of times on YouTube.                                                                                                     

­­While Swarbrick didn’t invent “OK, Boomers,” she became its heroic face for millennials and Gen Zers everywhere who have grown increasingly frustrated with the societal and political structures put into place by baby boomers. What was accepted in the past will not be readily accepted by today’s younger generations, and Swarbrick’s “OK, Boomers” moment summed up the angst of young people around the world as they interact with older family members, politicians, and business executives.

The book is available at Amazon and from the Business Expert Press. In its eleven chapters, we dive into topics that include: how the different generations have been formed, how to hire and retain the different generations, how to help Gen Z acclimate to the workplace, how to train the different generations, why some team members are Quiet Quitting, and what the generations might look like in the future. It’s a practical guide for leaders at all levels.

[1] Reis Thebault, “‘Ok, Boomers’: 25-Year-Old Lawmaker Shuts Down Heckler During Climate ...,” Washington Post, November 5, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/11/05/ok-boomers-year-old-lawmaker-shuts-down-heckler-during-climate-change-speech/.

Want to Design a More Engaging Lesson? Design It Like a Video Game

A few months ago, my Millennial son changed my life: he gave me an Xbox. Some would say the change is for the better, while others might say it’s for the worse. Millennials, Gen Zers, and Gen Alphas, those young digital natives who’ve been racing and blasting their way through the gaming cyber-verse for most of their lives, would welcome me into their gaming fraternity, while Gen Xers and my fellow Baby Boomers who grew up with me in an analog world would say, “Huh? Now you spend all those hours playing a bunch of video games?”

I think it’s changed my life for the better. My favorite game is Star Wars: Battlefront, a record setting game that first hit the market seven years ago. But being behind the times, I’ve just now discovered it. Battlefront, and the sequel of other Star Wars games that followed it, are still hugely popular. When I go online to play with other gamers from around the world, I find a lot of people playing alongside me as we battle Imperial storm troopers and do our collective best to thwart Darth Vader’s malevolent plans.

As I was playing Battlefront this morning and getting my daily dose of digital heroism, I thought: “What makes this game is so much fun?” Besides having the pleasure of saving the galaxy on a daily basis, I looked at the way the game was designed — and I realized it had the same elements we should be working into our lessons as we teach Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

·      The game has an opening hook to grab your attention. As the game begins, you hear dramatic music, see the characters, and know immediately you’re in a battle of good vs. evil. While teachers don’t have a John Williams soundtrack, they should open their lessons with questions, an image, or a video to grab their students’ attention.

·      The content is relevant. Who doesn’t want to fight alongside Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker? When students see relevance in their content, they are more engaged and the learning is deeper.

·      You are challenged to think in the upper levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. If you don’t analyze, evaluate, and create new ways of surviving in the game, you lose quickly. Students also want to be challenged in their classes to think critically. Low rigor bores them.

·      The game becomes increasingly more complex with each level of difficulty. Besides having to think critically at each level, you must constantly learn new methods to stay ahead. A good lesson is often scaffolded. When the lesson is layered effectively, the content makes more sense to the students.

·      The colors are beautiful. You feel you’re actually seeing that planet in that galaxy far, far away. Students today are growing up online with vivid imagery. If they’re going to read black and white font in textbooks, they need to see bright images on their Chromebooks and on the large screen in front of the room.

·      Today’s Xbox and PlayStation consoles are light years (please pardon the pun, but I couldn’t resist…) ahead in the video quality of earlier consoles. The sound, special effects, and visuals make you feel you are part of an action movie. Students today spend much of their free time in games like this one, and perhaps they’ve moved into virtual reality games, which are even more interactive. When students aren’t gaming they’re often watching YouTube and TikTok videos. How do we compete with these fast paced images? Partly through the use of videos in the classroom. Students need to see videos at key points of the lesson to be engaged.

·      In video games, you often reach checkpoints as you journey through the different stages. You can then start from these checkpoints if you get defeated or if you exit the game and come back to play later. It saves you from having to start over with parts of the game you’ve already mastered. Think of it as a type of benchmarking. A great lesson provides students with opportunities to check their learning through formative assessment and benchmarking so they can focus on what’s ahead of them and don’t spend their time covering material they’ve already learned.

·      As you run through the scenes in Battlefront, you pick up tokens that allow you to unlock secrets and gain points. It’s a system of immediate rewards, a quick “Good job!” from the game designers. They realize today’s players want instant gratification. It’s the same with our Gen Z and Gen Alpa students who need constant praise and positive reinforcement throughout the lesson.

·      You can choose to play alone or go online and play with others. Sometimes I play in a 40-person game with players from around the world. In classrooms, Gen Z and Gen Alpha students are independent socializers, which means they like to be both unique (and sometimes work alone) and social, which means they also like to interact (and sometimes work with others). Some lessons can provide choices, but there should be lessons where students are encouraged to work in pairs and groups so they can have academically rich conversations and learn to work cooperatively.

·      To be successful in any video you have to hone your skills. When you play, you learn what works— and what doesn’t work. It’s the same idea in a lesson when students are allowed to explore ways to solve math problems and edit paragraphs. They are honing their skills as they analyze, evaluate, and create.

·      One essential part of a successful video game is the pacing. A game that spends too much time in one scene is boring, which causes the players move on to another game. The pacing in a lesson has to be right. Our students don’t have the option of doing another activity if the lesson drags, but that doesn’t mean they’re listening to us. They begin to tune out and think of other things.

·      When a game or scene in a game is successfully played to its end, the game’s characters celebrate with triumphant shouts. In an effective lesson, the teacher and students celebrate progress and mastery. It’s not just an elementary school concept; it needs to happen in secondary classrooms, too.

Here’s a final point I emphasize with all educators today: we need to do some of the things our students do to understand them and to help make our content relevant for them. If you’re not into gaming, you might consider finding an Xbox or Playstation and logging on. Perhaps I’ll see you soon on the planet Tatooine in Battlefront, and together we can fight Imperial storm troopers — and get some ideas for lesson design as we save the galaxy.

Classrooms in 2072: Preparing Students for Future Technology

How Does Technology Prepare Students for the Future?

Here’s a question I often ask educators: “How old will your students be 50 years from now in the year 2072?” For PreK–12 teachers and administrators, the answer is between 53 and 68 years of age, periods of high productivity for many adults. Then I ask this question: “Is your teaching just preparing your students for 2022, or is it also preparing them for 2072?” In other words, are you only preparing your students for this year’s accountability systems—or are you also preparing them to adjust and thrive through a long life of unprecedented change in the latter half of this century?

To prepare our students for the future, we need to first adjust our mindset. We need to prepare our students for the year 2072, not just for 2022.

We all know about Gen Z, our tech-savvy, entrepreneurial, connected students who started passing through our classrooms two decades ago, but many educators haven’t realized we have a new generation of students in our Pre-K through 5th grade classrooms: Gen Alpha, who are even more tech-savvy, entrepreneurial, and connected than their Gen Z siblings. Gen Z will be living into the 2080s and 2090s, and Gen Alpha will be the first generation to see 2100 in large numbers. This means what we teach today will impact our students for many decades into the future, a future more unpredictable than any time in history.

By 2072 our most recent high school graduates, the class of 2022, will have navigated a half century of constant, life-altering changes. Advanced forms of technology will play dominant roles in their lives. In Leading Schools in Disruptive Times, a book I co-authored with Dwight L. Carter, we wrote their days may be filled with 3-D printers, virtual reality rooms, and flying cars—while they grapple with the effects of climate change, increasingly powerful artificial intelligence (AI), and new types of problems we have not yet imagined. Education in 2072 will be individualized and delivered in new modes, much of them digitally based, that fit the unique requirements of the students and families, not just the school systems (if school systems still exist). Why do we need to know this now?

Because this transition has already begun. We are a part of it.

Think about the transitional role technology is playing in education today. The pandemic shutdowns in the spring of 2020 put more devices in the hands of students, forced teachers to deepen their digital skills, and dramatically increased technology usage in classrooms when in-person learning resumed. Individualized programs (like HMH’s successful Into Reading, Waggle, and Read 180) allow students to log into math and ELA platforms that track their progress and submit their data to teachers. New types of charter schools, many of them online, are already offering alternatives to traditional schooling. Millennial and Gen Z parents, as noted in my most recent book 5-Gen Leadership, are increasingly fed up with the stress and labeling of state testing and are advocating for more individualized learning, much of which can be delivered through a combination of in-person and online schooling. These trends won’t stop. On the contrary, they will accelerate as AI strengthens and provides more choices for students, family members, and educators in how, when, and where learning takes place.

How Will Using Educational Technology Benefit Students in the Future?

Here’s another way of viewing it: we know the return to in-person schooling after the pandemic shutdowns did not return us to the “old normal” but instead thrust us into a “new normal,” a time of new disruptions. We should view the 2020s as the beginning of a new era in education history, a rapid acceleration of school change centered on new demands from students and parents, advancing AI, and a growing reliance on technology in teaching and learning inside and outside of the classroom.

So what can we do to serve today’s students while transitioning into this dramatic, new future? We need to remember students of all ages still need human interaction and kind, supportive teachers—but we must also acknowledge Gen Z and Gen Alpha have grown up interacting with smartphones and tablets. Today’s students need to interact with technology in classrooms. The use of digital tools (online education apps and programs used by students) is no longer an option; it’s a necessity. Teachers must blend the old with the new, the paper with the apps. Digital tools, when used in the right way and in the right balance, make teaching and learning more efficient, and if we are going to keep Gen Z and Gen Alpha engaged, they need to type on keypads, draw pictures on touch screens, insert images into Google slides, and answer online assessment questions.

Digital tools should be used to promote high rigor. The three upper levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are analyze, evaluate, and create. By 2072, our 2022 graduates will have spent 50 years adjusting to new technology, new jobs, new cultural norms, and new ways of living; that’s five decades analyzing new situations, evaluating new options, and creating new ways to live and work. If Gen Z and Gen Alpha learn to think rigorously today, they will more successfully adjust to changes tomorrow.

Using Educational Technology Rigorously

Teachers should evaluate the level of rigor when using digital tools. Some of the most popular online programs just ask students to recall information, often quickly and in a game format. While these programs are engaging and can effectively review content and assess student knowledge, they only ask students to think at the remember level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Teachers should also implement digital tools that ask students to analyze, evaluate, and create content as they produce unique products. For example, a teacher could first use a remember level program to review content and check for student understanding, and then the teacher could have students use a second program to create an online book, slide presentation, or video to extend learning. Students could work independently or with a partner and have profound conversations about their products. Think of digital tools as new catalysts for high rigor.

Helping teachers build a deep tool chest of digital tools is a new professional development challenge, partly because a new gap has emerged in our teaching ranks between teachers who are highly proficient in using technology and teachers who are just beginning to learn how to use technology. All educators must work together to eliminate the digital teaching gap. Here are five tips to help teachers and administrators to close the gap.

Take ONE step at a time. No teacher should be expected to go from beginning to highly proficient in a year or even in two years, but teachers who begin with small steps and see success will want to take bigger steps and continue their growth.

1. Know it’s okay to fail. Teachers need to remember there will be days when the internet or online program doesn’t work. It happens to everybody. Administrators need to assure the teachers it’s okay to experiment with new digital tools, even if there are times when the lesson falls apart because of technology issues.

2. A staff should focus on implementing the same one or two new digital tools each year. We must be careful not to overwhelm teachers with too many new apps. Focusing on one or two tools each year allows teachers to build capacity. If teachers are learning the same new digital tools together, they can help each other in staff meetings, in PD, in peer coaching, and in team or department meetings.

3. Differentiate PD in technology training. Differentiation isn’t just for students. PD leaders should work to differentiate for teachers as well, taking into account their current comfort with technology and adapting their training to fit the needs of the teacher.

4. Administrators must lead the way with their own technology growth. School leaders need to grow alongside their teachers, model how to use the digital tools in PD and staff meetings, and share their own successes and failures. This will go a long way in helping the teachers see them as true education leaders.

Perhaps the most important point for closing the digital teaching gap is to combine commitment and support for digital growth with a deep sense of urgency. We need to work with educators at their individual ability levels to support them and elevate them—but we need to remember our Gen Z and Gen Alpha students need rigorous, technologically proficient educators now.

They will thank us in 2072.

This blog was originally published on the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt website on September 26, 2022.

Presenting as an Avatar

I recently gave my first presentation as an avatar at a conference sponsored by Ashland University in Ohio. I was in a virtual conference hall on a virtual campus. I got to choose my clothing, my hair, my skin color, and what to put on the screen behind me. This is a fun way to learn remotely, but does this make remote learning more, or less, human?

Either way, it was fun wearing Chucks, even remotely.

15 Tips for Hybrid/Remote Teaching

The pandemic is still raging, and most schools are offering classes remotely or using a hybrid/remote model in which many students, sometimes the majority, are still choosing to learn remotely while other students sit in a classroom. This means teachers, for all practical purposes, still need to hone their remote teaching skills. Here are 15 tips I’ve seen being used by great teachers that make a difference. 

1. Have one unified group of students in the hybrid/remote model, not a group of students who are in the classroom and a separate group sitting at home. And don’t just teach the students in the classrooms, the ones you see. Ask an equal number of questions to the students at home as you do to the students in the class. If doing group work, mix the groups. 

2. Slow down. Everything is slower in remote learning. Speak more slowly. Chunk the information in small parts. Use longer wait time when answering questions: your voice has to go through the internet, the student has to process it, the student has to unmute, the students has to answer, and then the message needs to make it back to you through the internet.

3. Do more to check for understanding. Constantly. It provides feedback and makes the lesson more engaging for students. Work in digital tools like Kahoot, Mentimeter, Padlet, and Nearpod (which is filled with highly engaging, interactive learning options). Or have the students answer in the chat box. Call on them to answer, especially those who might be struggling. 

4. Be efficient. Teachers feel stressed to teach the standards as quickly as possible. Just covering the material doesn’t mean the students are learning it. Instead of rapidly covering vast amounts of content so quickly the students can’t retain it, teachers should prioritize standards, use pacing that helps students digest and retain the content, be relevant, be rigorous, check for understanding, and do everything they can to be more engaging. 

5. Start with “a hook.” Do an opening activity that gets students engaged. Ask a highly rigorous question where students have to evaluate a situation or create a unique personal response. Make it relevant to their lives. Make the lesson interesting. Be less linear. We often scaffold up to the most interesting part of the lesson, which often means the best part of the lesson comes 20-30 minutes into the lesson. That’s too long to wait in remote learning. Try to move it to an earlier part of the lesson. 

6. Break up the direct instruction. Yes, direct instruction is still vital, but stretches of it beyond 10 minutes tend to lose engagement. Do something different every 7-10 minutes. Check for understanding, show a short video, have the students post something. Then go back to the direct instruction. And break it up again. 

7. Be clear in the objectives. As students are sitting at home, they are looking at screen surrounded by distractions. Let them clearly see the intent of the lesson. 

8. Remind students of the class rules. Show them a list of the expectations early in the lesson. Do it daily. 

9. Provide visual directions. At key points, hold up a sign in front of the camera that says, “Mute” or “Unmute”, or “Thumbs up or thumbs down!” Some teachers have the names of students on cards, and they hold up the card of the student they want to answer as they call on the student. 

10. Call on the students to answer questions. Call on them by name. Call on students early and often. If you wait until 15 or 20 minutes into a lesson before you begin to call on students, students will be less likely to answer. 

11. Culture counts. Establish relationships with students. Encourage them to take risks. Smile. Turn your camera on and show your face to the students. If they feel comfortable in the virtual room, they are much more likely to participate and stay engaged. 

12. Mix the activities. Don’t use the same routine, or same apps, every day. Deepen your toolkit. 

13. Use breakout rooms. Let the students talk with each other. Have them solve problems and do group projects. Don’t forget to move pair-shares, small group discussions, and jigsawing into breakout room activities. 

14. Differentiate. If using Zoom, use private messaging to answer questions. Assign students to breakout rooms based on their needs. 

15. Adjusting lessons doesn’t stop with moving classroom lessons to remote learning. When asked how they have adjusted to remote teaching, many teachers say, “I’ve really had to use how to use the technology.” Sometimes this means they’ve just taken their classroom lessons and moved them from presenting on the big screen of the classroom to the small computer screen in the student’s house - without adjusting the pacing, checking for understanding, engagement, and variety of activities used. 

Judgement Day for the University of Texas

Judgement Day has finally arrived for my beloved alma mater, The University of Texas at Austin. A long time ago, over four decades now, when I arrived on campus as an 18 year-old I was struck by the large number of Confederate statues placed in prominent places, the buildings named after Confederate heroes, and by the fact that the giant Littlefield Fountain, one of the most popular photo stops for students, parents, and tourists, was named after an obscure Confederate Army officer. 

It made me uncomfortable. I felt the university leaders had lost the Civil War, but they used what power they had left to send us a daily reminder of their Lost Cause — of slavery, oppression, and a Southern society ruled by the privileged few. Robert E. Lee, Sydney Johnston, and Jefferson Davis were not forgotten on the UT grounds. 

I should have complained, but I didn’t. 

But I did complain around 10 years ago when the UT president announced a commission to decide what to do with the statues. It was the only letter I ever wrote to a UT president, but I made it count. “Take them down,” I wrote, “and dump them all in the Colorado River.” 

They stayed up until they were removed in middle of the night in 2017. Over 150 years after the end of the Civil War, the University of Texas, this supposed bastion of free thought and one of the most academically respected universities in the Southwest, was forced to shed some of its wretched past in the darkness so no one would rally around the statues to take up the Lost Cause again. (One of the statues was stored away for a while but then placed in a different spot…)

Littlefield Fountain, hopefully to be renamed in the near future…

Now a new generation of UT students are demanding the university shed the rest of its Confederate past, and the voices are coming from the most sacred of UT institutions — the Longhorn football team. They’ve announced they won’t help recruit other African American players until their various demands are met, which include changing the names of buildings and fountains named after Confederate heroes and removing The Eyes of Texas as the school song. 

Quit singing The Eyes of Texas? That’s a big demand. The song’s a massive part of the culture, both in the state and at the University of Texas. But when this story of protest at UT began to break last week, I read more about the song’s background. 

And I was ashamed. 

I never knew about the origins of the song’s melody, that it had been a tune sung by slaves. I had heard that it might have been sung in a minstrel show, but I didn’t know the lyrics had their origins in one. I thought it was already a popular song that had been misappropriated by a small group of idiots. But finding out the racists wrote it? I won’t ever sing it again. 

I learned African American athletes, understandably, hate having to stand and sing The Eyes of Texas at the end of athletic events. I find it horrifying they were being asked to sing a slave song. (Spoiler alert: The second verse of the fight song, Texas Fight, is a jazzed up version of The Eyes of Texas, which means the Longhorn Band might be memorizing a new fight song Austin in the near future…)

 And I’m asking myself, “What else did I miss?” I, too, am doing my share of soul searching. 

I support the players’ demands, not because of football recruiting, but because everyone has the right to walk across a great university and not be forced to look at reminders of ignorance and oppression. The university will never help all of its students reach their full potential until it sheds every last remnant of its Confederate past. Renouncing the Confederacy and throwing The Eyes of Texas into the trashcan won’t remove all of the racism, but it’s a step that has to be taken. The song, and all other things Confederate, have to go. Now. 

Some Longhorn alums can’t get over the idea they’re being asked not to sing their beloved school song ever again. They need to understand something: This latest battle over bigotry is over and they’ve already lost. Regardless of what university leaders decide to do with The Eyes of Texas, do we really expect to see black, white, or any other ethnicities of young athletes singing that song from this point forward? No way. They shouldn’t, and they won’t. The discussion might continue among the older folks, but the decision has been made by the young people: the eyes of Texas were upon us. 

If the alumni still defiantly sing it at the end of the games, it will be like the founders of the university singing Dixie 100 years ago. The Eyes of Texas will be a new version of Dixie, a racist song sung by a defeated people who just don’t get that they’re standing on the wrong side of history. 

I’m still proud to be a University of Texas graduate because of the great people I met there and the incredible education I got in its buildings (some of them unfortunately named after the wrong kind of leaders). But the university needs to take this step that has been a long time coming.

Now we’ll see if today’s university leaders have the courage to undo the pain caused by their predecessors. 

P.S. This blog has been released on Juneteenth; the State of Texas is the only state that has made it a paid holiday for employees. If the state can do that, then there’s hope for the University of Texas.

Wanted: A New Type of Ph.D. Program

About 20 years ago I was accepted into the Ph.D. program at The Ohio State University. I lived in Columbus, and OSU was 15 minutes from my house. But before I could start the program I was hired to be the principal of a large, suburban high school, and I never had time to attend classes at OSU. So, I never got a Ph.D. 

 Sometimes I wish I’d gotten the degree, but I’ve done okay without it. 

 In the last few years, as I’ve crisscrossed America as a consultant, I’ve gotten a rare glimpse into hundreds of American K-12 classrooms, a view most people never get to see. I’ve always said it felt like I was getting a second master’s degree, one centered on the best practices and not-so-best practices I was observing daily. 

And I started thinking, “What if I could pull together my experiences and insights into a graduate program? What if I could dive into a course of study supported by educators at the top of their game and see where it takes me? Maybe it’s time to take another look at getting that Ph.D….”

But I travel all the time, so a regular program with traditional teaching in a classroom wasn’t an option, and really, there’s no way I’m sitting through traditional college classes ever again. A blended program, maybe. That’s not meant to slight professors in the universities or students who go that route, but I’m a 21st century learner: I won’t be held hostage to a schedule, four walls, and a university parking permit. 

So, I started looking at online options. I Googled “Online Ph.D’s,” and I found one from a major, highly respected university on the West Coast that offered online classes, a two-year program, and only required a few days each year of onsite for “immersions.” A mandatory trip to Hollywood each year to walk under palm trees as I strolled across campus? Could be worse. 

I went back to their site and did some more digging, and I gave them my contact information so I could receive information about the program. Then the sales pitch started. They were all over me. I got the first phone call, which went to my voice mail, and I meant to call them back, but I was hyper-busy. Then I got the second phone call in my voice mail a few days later, and then the emails started coming, and then more phone calls I let go to voice mail. 

I really meant to respond and ask them questions about the program. I didn’t mean for them to have to try to contact me so many times, but part of me was morbidly fascinated by how hard they were trying to recruit me. To be clear, they knew nothing about me. I was just a name, an email address, and a phone number. It’s not like they really cared about me or thought I had attributes they wanted in their program. They just knew I was interested in their doctoral program — which carried an $89,000 price tag. 

To them I was a big fish circling the baited hook, and they wanted to reel me in. 

I kept going back and looking at their website, and the more I saw, the less I liked about the program. The course titles didn’t appeal to me. I’ve lived a lot of the content. To be clear, I still have MUCH to learn about leadership, teaching, learning, and schools, but I wasn’t sure I could learn it in their online classes. I want a program built around my needs, not their traditional topics. I want guidance, people who can challenge me, and ways to explore and write.

And I realized something: I’ve evolved into a new type of learner. I’m more Gen Z and Millennial than Baby Boomer. I need some choice and a strong purpose for sitting through what they want to show me. If not, I can’t buy into it.

I had just about decided the program, and its hefty price tag (that’ll buy a lot of shrimp baskets and beer, ya know?) wasn’t worth it. 

Then I got an exasperated message left in my voice mail from one of the recruiters (there was a group of them, they were taking turns contacting me like tag team wrestlers). “You said you wanted information about the program,” she said. “Perhaps we have the wrong phone number...” 

I looked at the website again, formed some questions, and went online to make an appointment to call her. She had lots of available times. Apparently, there aren’t too many people looking to spend almost a hundred grand in two years on a degree they might not ever really need. Go figure.

To help her learn more about me, I sent her a link to my LinkedIn page before the call. She looked at it. For how long, I don’t know, but at least she made an effort. 

But when the call started I saw I was not really an individual. I was a potential pay day for the university. The conversation didn’t go well. Here are some of my questions and her answers. 

Me: Is there any flexibility in the course alignment? Are there other courses I could substitute?

The recruiter: No. The course progression is set and can’t be adjusted. 

Me: Did I read that I have to attend two online classes each week? 

The recruiter: Yes, the classes are taught in the evenings and on Saturdays.

Me: I travel a lot, and I live on the East Coast. So will I be logging into classes at 10:00 at night because that’s 7:00 on the West Coast? 

The recruiter: You’ll have some choices in days and times. A lot of people like the later classes because the kids are in bed. 

Me: It says there’s a writing requirement for admission. I’ve written two books that have been published by a major publisher. Can the writing requirement be waived? 

The recruiter: No. The professors want to know the students can write. You’ll have to take a 30-minute timed writing test. You’ll sign in, be given a prompt, and then write an essay. 

Me (getting a little, um, frustrated): How do I know these professors can write?

The recruiter: I’ll send you a link with their bios. 

Me: The program requires I get three letters of reference. Can’t they just look at my LinkedIn page and look at my accomplishments? Maybe I could send them a chapter or two from my books? 

The recruiter: No. That’s a requirement. 

I think she knew this fish wasn’t taking the big tuition bait. When we finished the call, I sat there thinking, “Two online lessons each week. No flexibility in admission requirements, regardless of what I’ve done in my career. No discernable ways or even any interest to really build the course progression around my needs. Wow, this would be a great program — if it were still 1998.” 

But it’s 2020, and all kinds of learners, including Baby Boomers like me, are calling for a lot more flexibility, personalization, asynchronous options, and highly relevant content. Yes, I could have some flexibility in the dissertation, but the other half the program would be set in concrete and when I got to the dissertation I’d be paying tens of thousands of dollars to them to write a book for them. That program would be absolute torture for me.

I got a polite email from the recruiter a few days after the phone call. She wanted to know if I had any questions. She also said if I weren’t interested, I could let her know so she could “close out” my request. Basically, they could leave me alone and rebait the hook for someone else. I wrote back and said the program might be great for some people, but it wasn’t the right fit for me. 

I don’t know of a Ph.D. program that would work for me at this point in my career. I understand the need to have high standards in awarding advanced degrees, but high priced, lock step programs don’t work anymore for a lot of people. For $89,000, I should be able to sit down with someone, look at the program, and find ways to create a path that works for both me and the university. I know the universities have high standards; I do, too. 

I’ve said the clock is ticking on K-12 education. We need to transform or perish. Well, the Alarm Clock of Doom is about to ring for graduate programs like that one, too. The rise of the individual and the demand for value will push them to evolve or become graduate school dinosaurs. Don’t they have some ancient tar pits in L.A. that trapped animals for thousands of years? Maybe that’s where this program is headed.

I’d still be interested in getting a Ph.D., but I need to keep searching. If anyone knows of a flexible, student centered program, let me know.

For now, I think I’ll go out and get a shrimp basket. 

5 Tips for Finishing Strong

We’ve entered the final stages of the school year. Depending upon your part of the country, you are either finishing at the end of May and have a few days left, or you’re in session into June and you’re courting the weeks. Either way, it’s been a brutal slog through this first bout of remote learning. These two months of distance teaching have felt like a 15-round heavyweight match. It’s been sweaty, bloody, painful, and not very pretty.  

I sort of know how hard it’s been for teachers. I’ve been leading virtual webinars and virtual coaching sessions, and I’ve had my share of Zoom meetings. I’ve found my foray into remote learning to be EXHAUSTING.  And I’ve had it easy – I’ve been teaching adults! I can imagine how hard it must be for teachers who have spent all this time teaching young people while the teachers had their own kids at home, their spouses wandered around in pajamas, their dogs barked at whatever passed the house, and their cell phones incessantly pinged and rang – and all while trying to keep that Gen Z or Gen Alpha kid engaged on the other end of the Chromebook camera.  

Wow. Here’s to the teachers and administrators who’ve given it their best shot.

But we’re not done. We’re only in Round 12. Three more rounds to go, and time to dig deep. Ding, ding! 

I did a webinar recently for a district that asked for a few tips on finishing the 2019-2020 school year strong, the year of the COVID Spring, the year of Closure #1, the year our high school seniors checked out even earlier than usual. Here’s what I told them. 

1.     Use the KISIM concept if you’re finishing in May: “Keep It Simple In May.” In a normal year, we often finish with projects in May and don’t introduce a lot of new material. Same thing for remote learning but even simpler. Take virtual field trips with them. Give them more choices. Just try to get them to focus. Let the students have fun with creative work around something relevant. (For people finishing in June, it’s KISIJ!)

2.     Don’t lose the parents. They’ve been in the ring for 12 rounds, too. Don’t overwhelm them. Send them a schedule of the last weeks of school so they can see the end and what’s coming. Be sure not to give too many assignments that require heavy lifting by the parents. We want them to finish strong, also!

3.     Convert end of the year celebrations into virtual celebrations. Have Zoom parties. Celebrate student successes. Send them award certificates. Thank the parents. Praise students and parents for their work and tenacity. Let the closure be positive for everyone. And don’t wait until the very last day to start saying your goodbyes to students; you might not get to all of them. So start a few days early with the virtual hugs. 

4.     Don’t forget to celebrate your fellow staff members, not just for work done during remote learning but the entire year. Has someone does exemplary work? Helped a lot of people? Commit to recognizing at least one person with whom you work. Let them hear about it. And don’t forget to honor all the support staff who help the school run. One of the greatest things about working in schools is being surrounded by positive people. Let the internet ring with praise at the end of the school year. 

5.     Reflect on your work. Ask three questions about your own growth: What do I need to keep doing? What do I need to stop? What do I need to start? Look back at this odd period in history and say, “That was hard time, but I was able to _____________.” Be prepared to proudly tell your story when this is all done. 

Hopefully, all teachers and administrators will have some time this summer to find their favorite beach, lake, cabin, or quiet corner of the den. And take long naps. And sleep late. And actually have the energy to stay up and see what’s on late-night television. Until those days get here, we have three more rounds to go. Finish strong! 

Words of Remote Learning Wisdom from an Eighth Grader

We’ve been through seven weeks of remote learning, and the voices of the students are starting to be heard. I encourage educators to read “Distance Learning is Better,” an opinion piece by Veronique Mintz in The New York Times of May 5, 2020. Mintz, an eighth grader, has some next steps for us as we reset education in the fall. (Mintz and the paper refer to is as distance learning; I refer to it as remote learning.)

In her piece, Mintz writes that she learns more at home because her middle school classmates are so disruptive, and some teachers are so ineffective, that remote learning is working better for her than classroom learning. (She’s only identified as an eighth-grade student; the paper does not reveal her school or district.) 

I’ve worked as an interim administrator and a consultant in some very tough middle schools, perhaps like the one Mintz attends. I get it. As an administrator, I spent most of my time going into classrooms and calming disruptive students or removing them so the teacher could teach. If you have 28 students in a classroom, and three or four them are talking across the room as the teacher is speaking, throwing things, pestering their classmates, walking around, lying on the floor, or constantly going in and out of the classroom, it’s really hard for the teacher to teach and the students to learn. 

This is what Mintz encounters daily in her school. She says she takes tests in classes over material the teacher never got to teach because of all the disruptions. Mintz has three recommendations for us when school when classroom learning returns in the fall. (My comments are written after her quotes.)

“First,” she writes, “teachers should send recorded video lessons to all students after class (through email or online platforms like Google Classroom).” One of the lessons for educators coming out of this COVID spring is that some students have thrived in remote learning. The digital teaching genie has been released from the bottle. Students will want elements of remote learning interwoven into classroom teaching. More digital learning, and perhaps video interaction, will be part of the new normal. 

“Second, teachers should offer students consistent, weekly office hours of ample time for 1-to-1 or small group meetings.” Students are having to work more independently this spring, and some of them are having 1-to-1 video conferences with teachers. They’re getting office hours. A lot of students will want more individual interaction with their teachers in school. 

Finally, Mintz has a suggestion for improving discipline in classrooms. She tells us some of her teachers are very effective, and these teachers should be asked to assist others. “Teachers who are highly skilled in classroom management,” she writes, “should be paid more to lead required trainings for teachers, plus reinforcement sessions as needed.” She, and I imagine her peers, are almost pleading for the good teachers to help the others. 

Mintz adds another point about her teachers who can’t control their classrooms: “Unfortunately, the same teachers who struggle to manage students in the classroom also struggle online.” This means some of her teachers can’t figure it out in the classroom - or out of the classroom. 

Teaching is hard, and leading schools is hard. It takes extreme amounts of talent to teach in tough schools. As school leaders implement changes like the ones Mintz proposes (which are all valid), they will encounter staffing issues, pay issues, technology issues, personality issues, time issues, and some teacher unions will try to block them. 

 Mintz is also encountering what I’ve called the New Digital Divide, which is the wall between teachers who are adept at using technology and those who aren’t. Teachers who have kept up with the changing times made technology one of the foundations of their teaching; they quickly transitioned into remote learning. Those teachers who didn’t adapt, for whatever reason, have been more likely to struggle. Students like Mintz are paying the price. 

 We’re headed for a reset in education. Some things can be learned about where to go in the future if we look back at this period to see what worked and didn’t work. We can use the lessons learned during this school closure to move forward, or we can ignore the lesson like the ones Mintz is trying to teach us and fall further behind. 

Has COVID-19 Killed State Testing?

States have suspended standardized testing this year. Wouldn’t it be great if states suspended testing next year, too? 

They should. 

Let’s look into the standardized testing crystal ball and see how this could all play out in the next 12 months. 

·      Our students have missed the last quarter of this school year. They are behind where they should be. 

·      We don’t know how the start of the next school will start. Will it be a staggered start where only half the students come each day? An early start? A late start? Will there be another flare up of the pandemic in the late summer to keep school from starting? 

·      Where are teachers going to start their curriculum? If they start teaching the standards of the grade level as they normally do, how’s that going to go? It will be to students who didn’t get 25% of the previous year’s standards. (Yes, we’ve had remote learning in the Spring of 2020, but how successful was it?)

·      Will schools, especially elementary schools where students are still building their skills base, implement a gap period where the first four to first six weeks of the new school year is dedicated to getting students caught up on the previous year’s missed work? If so, they will be behind in teaching next year’s standards. In normal years, teachers have to race to get all of the standards taught before the tests. Imagine starting in October. There’s no way they’ll be able to teach the current year standards and have the students prepared for the tests.

·      Don’t forget: Students will be returning to school, whenever that is, after being out of school for @ five months. We know what happens when students return after two and half months during normal summers: there’s a lot of reviewing to wake up their brains. Now imagine a five month gap.  It will be the largest gap since the dawn of the testing era.

·      If schools start on time with all students, and they work at getting the cobwebs out of student brains, they might be getting back to “normal” around the end of October and into November - which is the beginning of winter and when the COVID-19 virus could return in force - and schools could be closing again. And if that happens, there’s no way state testing can occur in the spring of 2021. 

·      What if the states lowered their passing scores for the tests to make up for the missed time in school? If they do that, who cares about the results? There will be an asterisk next to the year’s scores. They won’t mean much. 

Okay, let’s look at this another way. Let’s imagine the best case scenario where somehow schools start on time, plow through their curricula, and don’t have to close again in the next school year. Are we really going to trust the test results, whatever they might be, after so much school was missed this year? No. If the test results are good, we’ll ask, “What does this say about all of this attention to state testing when a kid can miss a fourth of the previous year and still do well on a test?” If the results are bad, we’ll say, “Yeah, well, the kid missed a fourth of the previous school year. What did we expect?” Testing will have been a waste of a lot of time, energy, and money.  

If the states would step up NOW and say, “We’re not going to test in 2020-2021 because of all the uncertainty,” it would take the pressure off of the teachers and let them do what they do best from the first day of school: take care of the kids, help them get acclimated to the new normal, and help them get caught up on their learning. 

And then look ahead a year and ask this: What’s going to happen with testing in 2021-2022? I’ve been writing for years that the clock was ticking on the lifespan of standardized testing. Knowledge is doubling at ever faster rates; some think it might be doubling every 12 hours now. I’ve said there was NO way our testing system as we know it would keep up with that sort of hyper-change. I knew the testing system would break down, but I thought it would collapse because of parent revolts or because policy makers finally came to their senses and realized the testing system was broken. I didn’t see it could happen because of a horrible pandemic. 

We’re moving toward an education reset. Let’s hope something positive comes out of these school closures: a move away from the 20th century standardized testing system that’s holding back our 21st century students and teachers. This testing has been the unstable foundation of our education system. Moving toward a new model will take vision.

And courage.