My Audacious Recommendation
10 guiding principles for schools to make them places where teachers and students thrive
This post is part of a series by @edpsychprof where I share edited highlights from my K12 guide to education along with additional thoughts and commentary
Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you... You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work — we must all work — to make this world worthy of its children. - Pablo Casals*
As we saw in last week’s newsletter, power, control, and politics are powerful, often unseen forces, affecting how schools enact their mission. Yet even though they have a strong effect on schools, like a storm pounding a building, if the building has a solid foundation, it can withstand many opposing forces. In this week’s post, I make an audacious proposal for I believe what schools ought to be like. First, I state what the purpose of K-12 schooling should be, then I set forth 10 key principles that all K-12 learning environments should embrace.
School Purpose: My audacious recommendation is that the purpose of schools should be to help its students thrive both now and later in life. We start with now. School is not just about preparing kids for some future life; it should be about helping them live their current lives better. We also keep an eye on the future, making sure we don’t waste kids’ time with meaningless work that doesn’t benefit them. And it should be a place where teachers can thrive too because happy teachers lead to happy students. This concept of thriving—being engaged, fully alive, interested, motivated, curious, doing work that is meaningful—is the gold standard I propose we use when deciding what and how to teach our students.
10 Characteristics of Schools that are Places Where Children Can Thrive
First, do no harm. Kids are naturally curious and eager to learn. Schools and teachers can stifle this curiosity and love of learning. This first principle is to ensure that schools don’t make things worse. Ideally, schools exist to help foster students’ growth and development, but the first ground rule must be, just like the Hippocratic Oath, to first do no harm to students. No physical harm, of course, but also no psychological harm, no emotional harm, and no harm to their dreams and aspirations. Of course, we are human, and hurts will occur. But there should not be anything in the system that by design hurts any student (or teachers or staff!); for example, things like racism, bullying, high-stakes testing, competitive rankings, punitive disciplinary measures, bribery, cheating, favoritism, inequity, oppression, boredom, wasting their time, social comparison, meanness, or demeaning language.
Build on kids' strengths. We have learned from the positive psychology movement that people are motivated when you start with their strengths, rather than on how they are measuring up to some external standard. Schools must be a place where students feel their unique strengths are valued and developed. This takes work. Teachers must get to know their students and provide a variety of opportunities for students to tap into their strengths.
Promote optimal development. Schools don’t exist to just teach skills. If that’s all they did, kids could learn from computer games. Rather, schools should be places that foster (rather than hinder, see Principle 1 above) children’s development. We know so much about the role of the social context in promoting optimal development. Besides students’ families, schools are the major social context for children’s growth and development. Students should be allowed to move and explore, learn and grow as a normal part of each day. Recess and plenty of time outside should be a regular part of the school day.
Treat students as individuals. As Todd Rose pointed out in The End of Average, the old model of trying to measure and rank students by some defined “average” level of achievement is not only outdated but harmful to students’ future success. Rather, we need to treat each student as individuals, working with them to create learning environments that work for them and accommodate their unique interests, point of view, voice, and perspective.
Be places where all stakeholders -- students, teachers, staff, administrators, and families -- are treated with dignity and respect. This should be a no-brainer, but sadly, in my years in schools, I have found that dignity and respect are often empty platitudes. Respect starts with those with the least power in schools — children — and then needs to be applied everywhere. Respect doesn’t mean doing everything kids or teachers want to do, but it does mean treating each with dignity. The Golden Rule should be the yardstick by which all interactions are judged: Do to others as you would like to be done to you. Do school principals want to sit in a small room all day without being allowed to talk freely or fidget? No? Then don’t do that to students.
Be places of wonder, exploration, and (dare I say it) fun, not only for students, but for staff and teachers too. When I was a new teacher, I was told I had to be mean until December or my students would have no respect for me. Thank goodness I didn’t listen to that terrible advice. Instead, I learned to wonder and explore right by my students’ side, drawing life size portraits of giants from Gulliver’s travels, oohing and ahhing over a great poem, rock climbing with them on a field trip, learning a new recipe, or signing on to the class campaign to allow girls to play football and not just practice drills during physical education class. It wasn’t me against them. It was all of us, together, exploring the wonders of the world, of science, math, history, books, movement, and relationships.
Provide consistent opportunities for students to experience flow/challenge. The state of “flow” is an enjoyable place for those experiencing it. It requires two things though: First, work that is at a “Goldilocks” level of challenge for students (not too hard nor too easy), and second, time. If we want students to produce quality work and develop a deep understanding of content, they need blocks of quiet, uninterrupted time to work. Maria Montessori recognized this; thus the Montessori curriculum provides several long work blocks where students can work without interruption. So did Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose book on flow is a modern classic. More recently, Cal Newport argued that deep work—that required for cognitively demanding tasks—is that which is done when there’s dedicated time to work without distractions. This also means that less is more; we need to get away from this idea that schools need to “cover” all important knowledge. At the rate at which knowledge is increasing, this is impossible, so it’s better for students to know a few things deeply than have a superficial and fleeting memory of a bunch of disconnected facts.
Give "voices and choices" to both students and teachers. No one wants to be a “pawn” of other people’s agendas. People are motivated when they have a sense of autonomy, or agency, in their lives and work. The same is true for children, as self-determination theory shows us. I call this “voices and choices,” and I’m arguing that all stakeholders should have – appropriate to their role, of course — voices and choices in how schools operate. Administrators should have a say in how their budget is spent and what curricular initiatives the school will pursue rather than having these things solely decided by the state or federal government. Teachers ought to have a say in how to teach the curriculum and what to focus on. They also should have some choice about their professional goals and professional development plans. Students ought to have choice in how they work, such as where they sit, and which work best showcases their mastery of the curriculum standards. Parents ought to have some choice about which schools their child attends and a voice in sharing what works for their child.
Problem solving-based pedagogy. Regardless of the specific curriculum or the subject area, the instructional approach ought to be based in a problem-solving pedagogy. We learn best when we are engaged in the content, and problems are engaging and provide an authentic context for learning. Although there is a place for drill, memorization, and skills-based learning, they can be taught as a kind of necessary foundation for more interesting and complex problems. Such skills-based learning should be treated like exercise, and students should be involved in deciding how to learn these skills in a fun way, keeping Principle 8 in mind.
Treat teaching as a real profession. Teachers are at the heart of good schools. If we don’t treat them well, how can we expect them to do their best with our nation’s children? Though they certainly need pay that is commensurate with their level of expertise, they also need opportunities for advancement, adequate planning time, offices (even if shared spaces), administrative assistance, mentors, and sustained professional development. Most of all, they need respect as professionals, and autonomy to teach in a way that is informed by their training and experience, not according to some cookie-cutter instructional manual or curricular plan that requires all teachers to be on the same page at the same time.
A final note: These are aspirational goals, and most U.S. schools fall short of these ideals. Still, if you know the end goal, it's easier to create the map to get there. Note that these principles do not specify a particular curriculum. That's deliberate. Good schools come in many forms with different emphases — STEM, classical education, arts-focused, etc. Still, I believe these principles are the goals toward which schools should set their sights. If anyone is interested in a checklist for evaluating your local school against these ideals, let me know, and I’ll share it in a link.
For Further Reading
The principles above are represented in the design and guiding principles of the K8 school I founded
Montessori Method: Montessori schools are often just Montessori in name only (hope to discuss this in a future post), but when they are done well, they are wonderful places for many (not all) young children.
Todd Rose. (2016). The end of average: How we succeed in a world that values sameness. HarperOne.
Cal Newport. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. Grand Central Publishing
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row.
Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash
Notes
*Casals, P. & Kahn, A. E. (1970). Joys and sorrows: Reflections by Pablo Casals. New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 182-183.