Jessica Stillman offers five ways managers breed incompetence. They appear consistent with laments teachers voice in blogs about school administrators.
I’ve adapted Stillman’s five according to New Era School Initiative (NESI) principles for accelerating learning rates through each lesson. This adaptation gives priority to building learner competence, an apparent inference drawn from Stillman’s list.
1. Instructional failure is not an option. Accept this principle. If a student does not meet learning criterion, then the teacher did not plan and offer the lesson adequately.
2. Use a learners’ view to plan instruction. Learners try to answer two generic questions through each lesson: What do you want me to do? and What will it cost me (in time, effort, etc.)? Plan each lesson to answer these questions promptly and directly at the start of each lesson. Build the lesson to amplify these answers.
3. Count something in every lesson. If a teacher does not know what else to count, set the stop watch on the teacher’s Tablet PC and monitor the number of seconds from start of the lesson until all students reach learning criterion for that lesson. Write start and stop times on a pencil and paper chart, when electronics are not used.
4. Plan more learning into every lesson. For teachers, lesson planning requires more thought than lesson presentation to accomplish this. NESI TIPSheets help make lesson planning more effective.
5. Expect more and measure more. People respond to what teachers measure. If a teacher wants more learning, then plan for more, expect students to perform more, and measure each performance more directly.
Sources:
Five Ways Managers Breed Incompetence
New Era School Initiative (NESI): Doynit on School Reform
Calculating Learning Efficiency: NESI Conversation 3
NESI TIPSheet 1: Learning Centered Lesson Plans Checklist
New Era School Initiative (NESI) Conversation 4: Doynit on Learning Risks