I figured that I’d major in communications and get my start in television. Lo and behold upon my arrival to Charlottesville, I found out that UVa was shuttering the Communications Department. Undeclared, as most eighteen year olds tend to be, I ambled across the bridge by the Curry School and saw a flyer for an interest meeting to learn more about the five-year master’s of teaching program. I attended the meeting, took a few classes, and applied for the program.

By my second field experience, I realized – Hey, I like teaching and I’m pretty good at it. But that’s not why I became a teacher.

About a year ago during an interview with Eighteen Eighty, filmmaker Vinny Verma asked me, “When did you know that you were meant to be in education?” Today I can call Vinny my friend, but at the time I barely knew him, which was why I was so surprised by my emotional response. I recalled a student teaching experience in the Charlottesville City Schools. One of our students, so brilliant and sharp, was dealing with an unpredictable living situation. Sometimes he was with his mom, other days his dad; frequently he stayed with is grandmother, but she didn’t live within walking distance to the school. One Monday morning it was pouring rain. School had been in session for an hour when he stomped in the classroom soaking wet. He yelled what the f*#!@ are you looking at? And he hurled his backpack at the ceiling. The classroom teacher and I could have been angry with him, but we knew what happened. He had stayed with his grandmother for the weekend, and in order to get to school he had to take two buses and walk a great distance. This third grader had done everything he could to get to school in the pouring rain. When I left that student teaching experience, he gave me a plastic rose from 7-11. I just hoped that he kept that drive to get school even when the world seemed so unfair.

That’s when I knew that I became a teacher to make a difference in the lives of children – to help them see that not only can they change their circumstance but they can change the world. After teaching for several years in Alexandria, VA, I moved to Baltimore, MD, and – unbeknownst to me – signed a contract to teach in a school in a neighborhood that had the highest homicide rate in Baltimore at the time. My time there made season 4 of the Wire look mundane. (The City Schools have come a long way since 2003.) Despite being surrounded by poverty, violence, recidivism,  depression, and drug abuse, our students wanted to learn, the teachers worked extremely hard, police officers and church leaders stayed committed to the community, and the parents wanted the best for their children.

I’ve come to love Baltimore, which is why I choose to live here, but so many of my students didn’t know about the world beyond their neighborhood. One student told me, “If I can’t get there by bus, then I don’t need to go.” By the end of the year, that same student asked if we could plan a trip to China.

This teaching experience taught me about the power of a teacher’s words. One of my students would wail every day about how her stomach hurt so badly she couldn’t focus; all she wanted to do was lie on the floor. Annoyed with the daily complaints, I snapped, “If your stomach truly hurts that badly this often, then you need to go see a doctor.” She returned to school a few days later and announced, “Ms. Tucker-Smith, you were right. I went to the doctor and found out I have a tumor!” Thankfully, the tumor was benign. Shamefully, I resolved from that point forward to always try to speak to students from a position of love not anger.

I loved teaching, but I became frustrated with school leadership and the System (capital S). For example, I had to attend juvenile court as a witness to an arson incident. Yes, we had real fires. One of our students was being charged with two offenses. He repeatedly said, I admit that I deal drugs, but I don’t set fires. The prosecutor, however, would only offer the deal if he plead guilty to both charges, and he was counseled accordingly. We knew he wasn’t responsible for the arson, but the System was more concerned with closing two cases than investing in a young man who felt his most viable option was to deal drugs. Fourteen years old with two strikes against him…What were we teaching our children?

Channeling my frustration, I enrolled in a school administration program, because surely there had to be a better way to lead. As the school year ended, one of my students told me, “I know you don’t need to stay at this school, but I’m glad you were here.”

Throughout my roles in education, I will always remember that classroom. Classrooms are where the students are. They come with their hopes and dreams, hunger and pain, struggles and gifts.

I became a teacher for the boy who fought his way through the rain to get to school, for the young man with two strikes against him, for the girl who was glad I was here.

For example, when our school improvement initiative focused on putting specific reading and vocabulary strategies into practice in each classroom, we specified the what. But teachers had the flexibility to implement the strategies in a way that worked for their curriculum, their teaching style, and their students. Sure we provided professional development resources, recommendations, and feedback, but teachers still had the freedom to make instructional decisions and everyone maintained laser-like focus on the end goal – student learning. We all played key roles and recognized our responsibilities.

On the other hand with LessonCast, we specify the process, but educators and learning communities choose their focus based on their identified needs.

As I reflect on the path of the Common Core, I seem to remember that initial reactions were positive overall. For the most part, the standards were well received. I’ve had yet to hear a well-articulated argument that the standards themselves are poorly written. This current Common Core pushback is related to the newly released assessment blue prints and test specifications. Now communities are realizing that they are not only being told what the goal is but how we are expected to measure and justify success.

We’ve been espousing the need to inspire innovative, creative, problem-solving thinking (and all of those other 21^st century buzz words), but now we are being forced into measuring those results with 20^th century standardized high-stakes testing. This does not compute, which is why the growing sentiment is one of repulsion. Even if the multiple-choice assessments are adaptive and delivered via computers, the underlying assessment philosophy is old school. I’ve never been a fan of high-stakes testing, but previously communities had the freedom to determine what was being tested even if they were mandated as to the how. By mandating the how and the what, the Common Core movement runs counter to a key principle in change leadership.

Now, I’m a firm believer in not just complaining about a problem but also bringing forth solutions. Thus, my next entry will be about aligning assessment to innovation and not the other way around.

This is a question that reoccurred for me after reading Nancy Flanagan’s “What Does Good Teaching Look Like?“ In her blog, she explains that this is a question that she would frequently use in a starter exercise presenting to candidates in the National Board Certification process. While the conversation could go on and on, rarely would she hear,

“What the teacher was thinking–and how he made decisions as the lesson unfolded. Whether the teacher had clear learning goals, and if her goals were important and worth pursuing.”

So much of what goes into great teaching isn’t even visible. When classroom management is seamless, it’s barely noticeable. The majority of effective teaching is in the preparation and in the mental adjustments made throughout the lesson. Flanagan expressed concerns with the emphasis on placing cameras in the classrooms to evaluate effective teaching practices. These videos might lead to capturing vignettes or demonstrations, but what about the behind-the-scenes thinking that led to the classroom implementation?

As an assistant principal striving to lead professional development that would actually lead to positive student outcomes, I learned two things.

1. It’s not enough to have a teacher visit a classroom or watch a video or even attend a workshop to support the teacher in putting a new teaching idea into practice in her classroom. When viewing a demonstration lesson, there is so much that is unseen. Effective implementation requires diving into the unseen: setting clear goals, finding multiple ways for students to show what they know, anticipating misconceptions, pivoting if needed to better support students.

2. When a teacher masters a lesson or a teaching technique, it’s more difficult than one might think to enable that teacher to share her idea with the school community. In the past, I’ve said to teachers, “That class was awesome! Can you tell everyone how you did it?” Then I realized that doing something well and explaining to others how you did it are two very different tasks. The teachers were able to give a general overview, but they didn’t go into the hidden gems that made the lesson so effective.

These challenges led to the lessoncast media format and implementation process (responses to challenge #1) and LessonArchitect (response to challenge #2). Today I was reminded of these original lessons learned during a Common Ground conversation following my presentation on using LessonCast to support students with special needs. We were talking about how master teachers make magic happen and how some of those instructional insights never leave their classroom. A teacher said to me, “You know it’s like a scientist who works in a lab, but never gets to publish his work.” There may be a cure for cancer, but without sharing what they’ve learned the world may never truly benefit.

Here’s an example. One of the highly referenced examples of using technology includes video taping lessons and sending the clips for feedback. This might work well for a traditional classroom with a teacher lecturing at the front, but I’m not sure how it translates to the personalized learning environments that we are currently piloting.

Picture this: One teacher sits with a small group of students who need additional support in prerequisite skills related to their target objective. Teams of students in groups of four are working collaboratively to deepen their understanding of a focus concept. Some are working with manipulatives, others are writing their own word problems, others are using function tables. Individual students have laptops on their desk and are working through an online math program at their own speed. A para-educator floats to assist students when they hit a roadblock or are ready to move on.

In this personalized learning environment, what would the camera follow? How could video capture the varying learning experiences, impact on student learning, or the level of planning required to make this happen?

As an administrator, I loved doing observations and sharing feedback with teachers. I enjoyed being in the classroom, but I watched the students more than I watched the teacher. I watched for the students’ level of engagement, their actions and reactions. I observed the instructional decisions made by the teacher and the impact on student learning. During observations, I moved around in the classroom and asked the students questions, so I could hear what they are thinking. This type of in-person observation still captures the complexities of a personalized learning environment. New enhancements through video need to consider how technology can support this future classroom versus the current classroom structure.

Another example is student response systems. Most response systems are designed with the traditional classroom in mind: a teacher asks the same question to all the students at the same time. Teachers can do that with pinch cards. When reviewing new technology, I’m looking for response systems that allow for teacher-generated, differentiated questions provided at the right time for each student. Or better yet, how about a system that supports students asking the questions?

It’s a natural tendency to focus on fixing pain points with solutions that fit the current classroom backdrop. But we have an opportunity to re-envision the entire stage. It’s like Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” That’s what it takes to be great, and the same rings true for education technology. Design with the future in mind.

A traditional lesson plan includes an objective, time and materials required, anticipatory set/warm up/drill, procedures (direct instruction/guided and independent practice), assessment, and closure. This is what I learned in my teacher preparation program, what I had to have available upon request as a teacher, and what was given to me as a school administrator during classroom observations. But the truth is, as a teacher, no one ever looked at my lesson plans; they watched my classroom. They saw how the students responded and my role in guiding their learning. As an administrator, I observed students and teachers, not pieces of paper. I only looked at the written lesson plan when the implementation went awry. One can write a beautiful lesson plan yet teach terribly. I am much more interested in the learning and teaching than the composed and indented.

The disconnect between a lesson plan and true learning has become even more glaring as I partner with schools diving deep into personalized learning. In exploring personalized instruction models, the concept of a lesson plan has begun to make even less sense for several reasons.

First, the idea of a fixed amount of time for every student to be able to learn the same thing – if we admit it – is absurd. Even 20 years ago, my high school realized that each student would need to adjust the amount of time spent learning different concepts. We had an eighth period, a time when we could choose where we needed focus and spend more time. When time is fixed, we vary (and often shortchange) the learning. A lesson plan by definition is time bound.

Next, a lesson plan is prepared by a teacher to fit a class of students. There is one objective, the same objective for each student. What if a student understands that already? What if a student is missing a critical prerequisite skill? Traditional lesson plan frameworks do not integrate the different roles of a teacher – coaching, facilitating, guiding, and giving feedback versus content delivery.

With traditional lesson plans, reflection and iteration are not inherent to the process. I never revisited my lesson plans from the previous year. I returned to previous lesson ideas, but each year (or each period really) was a new iteration because I was teaching a new set of students. I tweaked, revised, improved, bombed, bounced back. The nature of teaching and learning is reflective, and that level of metacognitive insight isn’t captured on a written lesson plan.

The term lesson plan suggests that the focus is on what is being taught rather than how students learn. As I work with schools designing personalized instruction models, I’ve shifted to using the term learning guide. As we plan instruction using learning guides, we consider each student’s level of readiness and prior understanding. We outline a set of available learning experiences rather than a set of procedures. This allows for a much more natural incorporation of UDL principles (multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement). Whenever I tried to incorporate UDL or culturally responsive teaching strategies into a typical lesson plan format, I felt like I was perpetuating the blue box standard (the callout typically seen at the bottom or to the side of textbook pages, e.g., where you would find the information about Crispus Attucks in the unit on the Revolutionary War).

Yesterday, I caught the middle of an interview on NPR. Thomas Ricks, discussing leadership and preparation in the military, explained, “Training is for the knowing. Education is for the unknowing.” The application of information learned during training makes sense when you can follow a set of prescribed procedures. What do you do when you are going into a situation that is unscripted? Of course this is akin to Helmuth von Moltke’s, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Education, true learning, is learning how to handle the unknowns. Focusing on educator training and neglecting educator education leaves us ill-equipped when faced with the unavoidable unknowns of helping children achieve their full potential.

Given that I’m struggling with the term lesson, you might have guessed that I’m debating the term lessoncast. I still believe that the media format we created is an incredibly powerful resource for improving teaching practice. Now I’m wondering if the root “lesson” effectively captures what I believe a lessoncast can demonstrate. Any suggestions?

If you plan to attend, we’d love to hear from you! Send us a tweet @MsTuckerSmith, @LessonCast.

Session: Design Improvement Initiatives Using Teacher-Created Videos #1342
Date: Saturday, March 16 | 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Location: McCormick Place South, Level 1, Room S101B

Description: Learn how a school designed, implemented, and evaluated a school improvement initiative using teacher-created videos as a focal point. Each two-minute video, called a lessoncast, explained how to implement an instructional strategy. The school improvement process used the videos to facilitate collaborative planning and instructional feedback. View sample lessoncasts and consider how similar resources may support your own learning community.

Friday evening, my husband, two kids, brother, and pet boxer head down I-95 to travel from Baltimore to Apex, North Carolina to attend my great uncle’s funeral. After numerous snack stops and bathroom breaks, we finally near the homestretch as I turn from the main parkway to the residential neighborhood where my cousin lives. I notice in my rearview mirror that two police cars have begun following me. I make several turns and the police vehicles and our car are the only ones traveling on this dark residential road. We turn on my cousin’s street and the navigation informs us that we are approaching our destination. I’ve never been to my cousin’s newly constructed home, so I slow down to read the house numbers. There are few streetlights, and it’s very difficult to see through the darkness with the headlights from the police car practically sitting on my bumper.

I finally see the house (which I just passed on the left), so I slowly turn into a driveway so I can park on the right side of the road. That’s when the blue and red lights start flashing. I stop the car and wait and wait.

I roll down my window and look towards the police cars stopped behind me. That’s when a female officer yells for me to stay in my vehicle. I had not planned on getting out and at this point, after driving six hours from Baltimore to NC, I am more than annoyed at being less than 20 feet from the house and much needed rest while I wait for the officer to explain the situation.

Finally the young officer comes to the car, but she stops by the back seat and tells me to roll down my back window. My six-year-old son is sleeping in the seat behind me, so I ask her: Why have I been pulled over?

Officer: Because you were driving extremely slowly and practically came to a stop in the road. (This is her first UNTRUTH. They started following me from the main road, so how could my slow driving in this very poorly lit residential neighborhood be the cause for their suspicion?) Now roll down your back window!

I do not see the connection between driving slowly and the back window, so I start to explain that I have two young children sleeping in the back – when my brother (who is sitting in between the car seats) complies with the officer’s request. She sticks her flashlight in the window and shines it in my son’s face. My brother reacts by rolling the window back up. She yells, “Don’t you roll the window up on me.” I (now catching an attitude) explain again that I have two young children sleeping in the back seat. Again, my brother rolls down the window, and this time she holds the flashlight at more of a distance, but the kids are now awaken by the cold January air and disturbing light.

Seeing that there is no contraband in the back of the car (just two confused children, a protective uncle wedged between two car seats, and a dog who could use a walk), she asks: What are you doing here? I explain that I’m here to attend a funeral tomorrow. I’ve never been to this house before, and the streets are dark. She takes my driver’s license and walks back to her vehicle.

…A half an hour after she first flashed her lights, the officer returned to our car with my driver’s license. She tried to explain that from her perspective how a person who is lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood can look similar to a person driving under the influence. I bit my tongue when I wanted to respond: But you never checked my SOBRIETY. You never asked the standard: Have you had anything to drink? You never even looked me in the face, because you were looking for something else.

My son, who was now wide awake, asked, “Mommy, why are you so mad?” I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say, “because she is lying about why she pulled us over and she unfairly detained us so she could try to find something to charge us with.” I wanted to yell, “I’m mad because you had to wake up to a police officer shining a flashlight in your face, and there was nothing I could do. Because I’m tired, and it’s not right.”

I was torn, because I don’t want my son to grow up jaded and cynical about law enforcement. (For goodness’ sake, his grandfather is a retired police officer.) But I also have to realize that I am raising a black son in America, and the unfortunate truth is that everyone doesn’t get to play by the same rules. My husband and my brothers have all been unfairly pulled over and detained (multiple times) by police officers. One officer even had the audacity to admit, “bunch of black guys driving on out-of-state-tags during beach season. I figured I’d find drugs.” Then he proceeded to make them get out of their car, while he searched it for illegal substances. We’ve been forced to remain at our car by the side of the road when we have done nothing wrong – in the name of protecting society. But what can we do when it’s dark, and it’s just us and the police?

While I’ve ranted about my personal experience, I’m confident that this lesson can be applied to other situations. Surely there are decisions by powers of authority in education that are guided by less than pure motivations and justified by a “for their own good” mentality.

My eventual answer to my son: Because she’s using her position of authority to treat us unfairly, and I feel like I have little recourse to resolve the matter. Of course, he didn’t really understand what I was saying.

One day, I hope to have a better answer for him, but I can only control the example that I set. Thus, I strive to treat and protect him and all other children with means that are just and equitable to achieve an end that is honest and true to their full potential for making this world a better place.

The DT for Ed Toolkit divides its process into five phases: discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution. In each phase, I noticed a recurring them of continuous feedback. As we design new ways of teaching, learning, collaborating, and leading in education, how do we know what methods truly benefit students, teachers, parents, and the learning community as a whole?

In thinking about the intersections of personalized instruction, design thinking, and lean principles, I’ve started thinking more deeply about how to design learning loops like:

- Helping students learn what works for them – encouraging lifelong, active, independent learners.

- Building supports to assist teachers in learning what works for which students under what circumstances.

- Schools understanding what structures (e.g., schedules, instructional tools, curriculum, collaboration opportunities, family-school connections, community partnerships) are working and what improvements are desired.

One of the toolkit recommendations is to seek inspiration in new places, so I’ve begun looking for learning loops in non-education spaces. Thus far, my favorite examples include the miles per gallon display on my hybrid car, my childhood ballet experiences, and biological feedback systems.

I love my Honda Civic hybrid, but when I first got my car what I loved most was how the dashboard would light up green and show how many miles per gallon I was getting at a given moment. Over time, I learned what rate of acceleration or deceleration would maximize my gas savings. Now, I barely look at the display, but I instinctually know what it feels like to drive with maximum miles per gallon efficiency.

Growing up as a budding ballerina, I came to see feedback as an individualized yet very public experience. Receiving individualized, immediate feedback had a much more profound connection to learning than when an instructor gave a blanket comment to the whole class. When a generalized statement like “everyone needs to point their toes” was given, one could assume, “she’s not talking about me.” But when the teacher touches your foot and shows you how far it should be pointed, you feel the lesson.

Another learning loop that inspires me is the human body. I remember being in the hospital after delivering my daughter, and the nurse taking my temperature kept whispering, “This can’t be right.” I tried to tell her, “I feel so cold…” but my blood pressure was dropping, and apparently speech was not my body’s priority. Neither was staying awake. As I started to fade, I could hear the machines alarming. Thankfully when I woke up, all was well; my body stabilized and proceeded on the road to recovery.

Reflecting on these three non-education examples (okay, the second blurs the lines a bit), I’ve gathered a few key takeaways:

Feedback is often multisensory. In driving my hybrid, I could see the feedback and immediately adjust. In dance, we were shown examples to strive for. Even if the teacher was beyond her prime for a particular movement, she made another student demonstrate. We were taught what a correct position should feel like. Then we digested the feedback and practiced over and over, until the feeling or the vision or the sound became second nature. Should we look to incorporate a more multisensory approach to deliberate practice when designing learning loops in education?

Effective learning loops lead to the strategic use of resources. When my blood pressure dropped, my body prioritized its resources. In dance, we learned how to use which muscles for the maximum effect. My trips to the gas station were cut in half. Unfortunately, I also see what happens in education when the learning loops are broken. Sometimes it’s akin to an allergic response, like a body misinterpreting a substance and reacting inappropriately. I think back to my experience as a summer school principal recognizing how incongruous it was to respond to an eighth grader who is still struggling with addition and subtraction by giving him drill-and-kill worksheets. Clearly we need to design learning loops that sensibly use resources to support and build up rather than beat down.

Individualized feedback and deep learning can change habits and trajectories. Even when I am not in my hybrid car, I still drive in the same manner (easy on the accelerator, coasting whenever possible). As a young dancer when a new teacher recognized my potential and relentlessly gave me feedback, I moved from the corps de ballet to principal as the Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty. My entire trajectory as a performer changed. I am reminded of the Lao Tzu quote:

“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”

Thoughtfully designed learning loops can craft new habits and trail-blaze new pathways. Inspiration by design.

Somewhere in the design process we need to remove the stigma of getting feedback, the embarrassment of learning from mistakes. How do we uncover the constructivism in constructive feedback? By seeking inspiration in unrelated spaces, I’m moved to think about incorporating multisensory approaches, designing loops that inform the use of resources, and recognizing the potential for learning to help individuals find their trajectory and shape destiny. After all, according to Lao Tzu, it starts with a thought.