On Educating the Mind and the Morals

I enjoy collecting quotes and sharing them with my students. In my desk at work, I have two envelopes. Right now, one is overflowing with scraps of paper that have written or printed thoughts from other people. And almost every day of the school year, I'll search through that envelope for one to write on my whiteboard, an insight to share with my students and any adults who visit my classroom. The second envelope is empty, but it will get fuller and fuller as I transfer the scraps of paper from the first envelope to it--my effort not to repeat a quote during the two years I have my students. In the past, they've noticed repetitions, and on several occasions, students have given me either their own quotes, or ones they've found, to share.

Recently, I came across the following idea: "To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." This is credited to Theodore Roosevelt, but, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson University, there is no known source written by Roosevelt to which this idea can be attributed.

Regardless of the source's accuracy, I find the thought intriguing. I agree with the opinion suggested that a person who lacks morals is a menace to society. A moral, in the sense of this quote, is a person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do. And because this quote is typically assigned to Theodore Roosevelt, a former president of the United States, it might be assumed that the morals aren't Roosevelt's personal convictions, but the commonly agreed upon set of morals around which the United States society is oriented. A person who is unaware of or who doesn't subscribe to this set of morals could be a potential threat to harm the greater community.

But what challenges me as a teacher is the suggestion that educating the mind and educating the morals can be exclusive. Can a person develop a well-educated mind without also developing morals? Is it possible to be a critical thinker without considering the set of beliefs by which one will conduct him or herself? And is this quote questioning my practice?

A quick perusal of local school districts' statements of vision/mission/purposes yields the following ideas: "...with engaged and enthusiastic learners...is committed to developing well-rounded individuals...cultivates curiosity and collaboration...encourages responsible citizenship...engage students' minds, hearts, and voices so that they become educated, caring, and responsible adults...inspires self-driven excellence...where all students will learn, grow, and become contributing members of our society...prepare students to become life-long learners and contributing members of society..." It's evident that on paper, or websites in this case, public school educators are committed to educating both the minds and the morals of students. But can this be translated easily into action?

Morals seem to depend on our judgment. In argument writing, an argument of judgment explores what may be right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, fitting or not fitting, etc. But is it easy to make sound judgments? Good judgment, it appears, depends on the honing of other critical thinking skills. Making inferences, categorizing, identifying characteristics, determining similarities and differences, recognizing causes and effects, and making reasonable predictions are all skills upon which judgments rest. For example, an unfortunate problem in schools is bullying. Students report witnessing bullying, and the moral issue they then face is whether or not to intervene. In order for a student to decide to step in when he or she witnesses bullying, a number of other thought processes need to occur. The student must know what constitutes bullying, be able to tell when a situation is bullying, and when it isn't, be aware of the different ways to interrupt a bullying situation, and have a picture of the dynamics that typically result in bullying and the immediate and long-term effects of bullying on the parties involved.

As I've illustrated, it takes time and effort to make good judgments. Also, each of the aforementioned thinking skills require clear instruction and much practice. Ideally, students would tackle judgments based upon our society's morals after some experience making sound judgments around concrete topics, such as which mascot is the best choice for a school to adopt or which person best qualifies to receive a particular award or why a game or toy may or may not be suited for a particular child. But that would mean passing up many opportunities to address basic values of our nation.

So, it appears that public school educators, in theory, are committed to educating both the mind and the morals; the path to educating about the morals is through and dependent on educating the mind; and that path is long, complex, and arduous. But am I getting my students to the point where they can grapple with our society's values and asking them to reason out how they think about core morals?

When I reflect on my teaching recently, I must admit I don't sufficiently attend to educating my students in morals. I give a lot of focus to critical thinking skills. And I allot time, occasionally, to discussion or writing about morals students encounter in the literature we read. But, for the most part, I depend on my modeling to educate students in morals. I leave it to the students to glean from my actions what they should adopt as morals of our society. 

However, every day in my local newspapers, I see evidence of people in our country violating what I perceive as morals of our society. A woman allegedly shoots four people in response to having a child removed from her custody. Two people are arrested for intending to sell drugs to addicts. Dozens of students at an Ivy League school are caught cheating in a Sports, Ethics & Religion class.

Yet, at the same time, I can also always point to instances in the paper of people upholding the morals of our society. Recently, in the local paper, there have been articles about a man who earned both a Purple Heart and Bronze Star during his service in World War II, a group of volunteers who plan to record the life stories of people with Alzheimer's disease, and a retail company's plan to eliminate stereotyping in their promotion of toys.

Lorin Anderson, in "What Every Teacher Should Know: Reflections on 'Educating the Developing Mind,'" and Daniel J. Levitin, in The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, both clearly state what they believe should be a primary goal of educators. They think we should emphasize teaching students how to make good judgments about the quality of the sources and the information they find while doing research. And this is an important skill. Without reliable information, students will be misguided in their thinking. But being able to discern which sources are and aren't dependable and what information in sources is valid seems to be just a part of a greater process and not the ultimate goal.

The eventual target, it appears, should be to educate students in morals. And I believe I've been remiss in my approach. It seems incumbent upon me to address, explicitly, morals with my students. For, in the end, I want them to be good people--generous, honest, accepting, courteous, gallant, just, and gentle. My hope is to do my part to help my students become protectors of our society. 

 

A Lesson Teachers Can Learn From Grey's Anatomy

For the past few months, I've been watching old seasons of Grey's Anatomy on Netflix. At the end of a long day, it's easy to queue up another episode, recline on the couch, and lose myself in the social and professional difficulties of the show's main characters.

One critical aspect of Grey's Anatomy, is that the primary setting, Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital, is a teaching hospital. This setting drives the plot of the first eight seasons--a group of doctors progress through their residencies towards becoming attending physicians. These residents learn from their mentors in labs, patients' rooms, operating rooms, and the operating rooms' observation decks.

An observation deck is often the setting for scenes. Viewers see characters seated above an operating room, and the observers are regularly taking notes on the proceedings below. It's clear that residents are expected to observe operations and learn from what they see and hear attending surgeons and other residents doing and discussing in the operating room.

But it's not just residents who frequent the galleries during operations. Attending surgeons are also seen watching procedures, and taking notes. It's clear that these characters, who have already established themselves in their careers, are still interested in learning from their coworkers. And it's here that teachers can learn a lesson--observation is a powerful way to improve one's practice.

Over the holiday break, my principal sent out an email to teachers in the building. She asked for volunteers to have administrators in the district come to a class and observe us teach. The purpose of the observation was for the administrators to practice using a new evaluation method that will be implemented across the district next year. I volunteered.

This past Thursday, four administrators came to one of my classes to observe me teach. Even though I knew this observation was for them to learn, I was nervous. I hoped that all would go well--that students would be on task; that the discussion I had planned would be lively; that I would not have time to kill at the end of the lesson. A few hours after the administrators left, one sent me an email, thanking me for letting them observe me. In her email, she used the terms "daunting," "well above any job description," and "this risk" to describe the observation.

I find it regretful that an observation of a teacher, done by other educators and meant for the purpose of learning to become better at one's job, is an anomaly that garners the above thinking from both myself and the observers. I should have been at ease in this situation, and the administrators should have seen this as just another of many opportunities to become better at leading teachers to being better teachers.

So, I've decided that it's time for me to do my part to make a change. Just like the Grey's Anatomy attending surgeons, I intend to make it a regular part of my practice to observe my coworkers. I can learn ways to improve how I teach from watching any of my coworkers--those with 30-plus years of experience, and those with less than five; those who teach the same subject as me, and those who teach other subjects; those who are currently teaching 8th graders like me, and those who are teaching 5th graders.

And I plan to make more of a point of inviting my coworkers in to watch my classes. I enjoyed the conversation I had with the administrators on Thursday after the class was over. As we talked about the lesson, I found myself reflecting on what I'd done and making mental notes of how I would adjust the lesson for the next class. Being observed helps me be more mindful of my techniques, of all the little things I do and don't do that may or may not make a lesson a success for the students.

I'm a teacher. But I'm also a learner. And while learning to become a better teacher through attending workshops, doing independent reading, taking part in book studies, and taking graduate classes are all valuable, I should also be taking advantage of the wealth of knowledge and skill in teaching that surrounds me by both observing my coworkers and being observed by them while we teach.

Welcome the Common Core State Standards

In the United States today, some people seem to think our public education system is broken. We're told what is happening in the classrooms of the 21^st century is a shadow of the educational approaches of the mid-20^th century. An impression exists that the techniques of educators today are failing to prepare students for the challenges of adult life. But this is untrue. Many trends and practices in public schools today are proving successful at preparing students for college, the workforce, and civic life in the future.

One of the hottest educational topics of concern gracing the editorial pages and education sections of newspapers lately is the Common Core State Standards [CCSS]. Many people have misgivings about the impact on students and the public of implementing a set of standards throughout the country. While the CCSS and their execution aren't perfect, people should be ready to embrace them because the CCSS are a positive development in public education today. 

Some have suggested the CCSS are a national curriculum. This is incorrect. A curriculum is a set of courses offered by a particular institution or that comprise a particular field of study. Calling the CCSS a national curriculum conjures images of students across the country only taking Civics, Economics, U.S. History, and World History for high school Social Studies classes or only taking Language Arts, math, science, and Social Studies in middle school because these are the subjects with which the CCSS are specifically oriented. But the CCSS doesn't require, or even suggest, study of only particular subjects. Rather, the CCSS outlines sets of skills students should learn in preparation for college, careers, and civic life. 

For example, one standard is students should be able to read an informational text and make logical inferences based on details from the text. The CCSS then outlines a progression of benchmarks, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, which will enable students to achieve this standard at a degree of depth necessary for college, careers, or civic life. Thus, a third grade student will be expected to determine the main idea of a grade-level text and identify details which support that main idea. An eighth grade student must also identify the main idea of an informational text, but he or she must be able to analyze the development of the idea over the course of the text. And a twelfth grade student must be able to identify two central ideas in an informational text and analyze how they interact and build on one another as they develop through the course of the text. 

National standards in education are not a new development. The National Council of Teachers of English adopted standards for English/Language Arts in 1996. The National Council for the Social Studies developed standards in 1994. In 1989, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics published Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics. And the National Science Education Standards were established in 1996. Also, because of the No Child Left Behind Act, individual states, or small groups of states, such as Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, developed sets of standards for public school students to achieve. The CCSS are an outgrowth of such standards. 

Neither are national standards unique to the realm of education. They may not be called standards, but in many aspects of our everyday lives, we reap the benefits of national standards. Take a man traveling by car from New Hampshire to Missouri. He can, thankfully, be assured that the bridge he drives across in New York is subject to the same standards of design as a bridge he drives across every day on the way to work from Newport to Claremont. And if he stops to eat at a restaurant in Indiana, he can be confident the grilled chicken on the menu has been processed according to the same good manufacturing practices of food as the chicken he likes to have as a topping on a pizza from Out of the Ordinary. Finally, when our intrepid traveler reaches his destination, he trips while stepping out of the car and breaks his arm. But he can be happy to know that the doctor setting the bone is expected to adhere to the same performance measures as the doctor at Valley Regional Hospital who successfully set the traveler’s leg, broken while skiing on Mount Sunapee, the previous winter. It’s important to establish national standards to help ensure the public’s well being, including the future success of public school students across the country.

The establishment of the CCSS should hearten a variety of stakeholders, as well. Right now, 40% of freshmen in colleges must take one or more remedial courses before entering into the typical curricula of the colleges. There has been a disconnect between the rigor of preparation in K-12 schools and the expectations of colleges. In the future, college admissions counselors may feel confident the B a student from Florida receives in English during eleventh grade means she can perform as well in English 101 in college as a student who receives a B in eleventh grade English at a high school in Massachusetts. Also, the CCSS should, ultimately, save students, parents, and businesses money because the students are prepared for either college or careers after high school and do not need to pay for remedial courses or require costly extra training by businesses. As well, a math teacher in a public school in Montana should feel confident that a student who has transferred there from Arizona can slide easily into the math class. And parents should not have to be concerned that if they move from a school district in Maryland with their fourth grade student, their child will be behind in reading in the school district in Alabama.

 That last point addresses a primary reason why the CCSS are positive to the progress of public education in the United States. From Brown vs. Board of Education to Lau vs. Nichols to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to No Child Left Behind, efforts have been made to provide each student in public schools with the equal opportunity to receive a good-quality education. By adopting national sets of standards for knowledge and skills acquisition, the state and federal governments are further trying to assure that students, no matter what school district in what state of the country they are learning in, are all having the opportunity to learn to the same standards of achievement. 

Without question, the CCSS are tough. They ask students to learn complex concepts and skills throughout their public education. Upon comparison to the standards states already had in place, researchers found only two states with standards as challenging as the CCSS. But public educators and the parents of the students passing through the public schools should be confident in students’ abilities to learn at high levels. College, business, and civic leaders are—they know what it takes to succeed in those arenas as adults, and the CCSS have their support. The adults tasked with preparing children in public schools to pass onto college, business, and civic positions should adopt the CCSS as a guide to students’ future success and incorporate the standards into their curriculum at all levels of public education.

Students' Sense of Control and How Teachers Can Affect It

When I was in junior high school, a teacher gave me some advice about luck. She told me and my classmates that for good luck, the first thing we should say out loud at the beginning of each month was "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit." And for years afterwards, I followed that advice.

Did my life improve due to my adherence to this advice? Did I excel in school? Did I land my dream job and wow my employers, so I got promotions and raises? Did I become full of confidence and optimism and happiness? No. My life didn't unfold as I expected it should going forward, and I didn't understand why.

But today, 30-plus years later, I do understand. I was susceptible to my teacher's advice, and I wasn't getting what I wanted in my life, because of my locus of control.

Locus of control is what people see as the forces which shape their lives. There are two types of locus of control, internal and external. People with an internal locus of control believe the course of their lives is dependent on what they do. The actions people with an internal locus of control do or don't take are the primary causes of their success, or lack thereof. On the contrary, people with an external locus of control believe the way their lives progress is primarily due to outside forces, or intangibles, such as luck. If a person doesn't get the promotion, it's because the boss dislikes him or her. If someone's relationships keep falling apart, it's due to the mirror he or she broke five years prior.

In junior high school, and for years afterwards, I had an external locus of control. This wasn't due to the teacher who suggested a way for me to bring myself good luck. By then I was already settled into that mode of thinking. And this locus of control orientation kept affecting my adolescence and young adulthood.

In the very least, educators should be concerned about their students' locus of control orientation about academics. Michael Wise, in "Locus of Control in Our Daily Lives: How the Concept of Control Impacts the Social World," concludes that locus of control orientation significantly affects our daily lives. And according to Drake Baer in "How Your 'Locus of Control' Drives Your Success (And Stress)," people's locus of control orientation impacts emotional health, success in school, ability to deal with stress, job satisfaction, problem solving, and goal achievement. Which orientation more positively affects these aspects of our lives? Internal.

Can students' locus of control orientation change? Mark Phillips, in "8 Myths That Undermine Educational Effectiveness," suggests it can't change. In his discussion of the first myth, he states that significant variables to students' success are socioeconomic status, neighborhood, psychological quality of home environment, and support of physical health. Phillips' implication is that factors outside of students' control greatly influence how well they will do in school. Also, in The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin asserts that locus of control is stable and isn't changed by experience other than to strengthen the orientation someone already holds. However, Kendra Cherry states in "What Is Locus of Control?" that as people get older, locus of control becomes more internal. And Baer writes that locus of control isn't set and can change based on experience. Finally, in The Skillful Teacher, Jon Saphier and Robert Gower posit that students can be retrained to have an internal locus of control, rather than an external locus of control.

Based on my personal experiences, I think teachers should believe students' locus of control orientation can change from external to internal, and teachers should make efforts to bring about that change when it comes to academics. What Cherry writes makes sense. Much of students' lives is out of their control. Students are dependent on adults to make many decisions for them and to ensure that the students are safe and healthy. But when it comes to education, each student can largely be in control of how much he or she learns and how successful he or she is academically.

There are a number of actions I take to reorient students to an internal locus of control, one of which is a quote of the day. Each day, I write a different quote on the board. Many of these quotes have either the direct or implied idea that students can control their success. Quotes, such as "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work," commonly attributed to Thomas Edison, and "You fail, and then what? Life goes on. It's only when you risk failure that you discover things," by Lupita Nyong'o, send the message that students' get out of life what they put into it. I hope that by regularly repeating this kind of idea through these quotes, students will start to believe they can choose how their lives will progress.

Another tactic I take is through my encouragement or praise of students. Whenever students tell me about a test they have coming up in another class, or a performance or competition they're anticipating, or when I give a quiz, I never say, "Good luck." Instead, I say, "Try hard," or "Do your best," or "I'm sure it will go well." And when a student has done well on an assignment, I use phrases such as "Nice job," "Good work," or "Strong effort." As with the quotes, I hope regularly sending the message that effort correlates with success will lead students to believe their effort can control how well they do in school.

A third way I try to influence my students' locus of control happens when I teach them reading and writing strategies. During the course of instruction, I make sure to point out, explicitly, why and how the strategy can help students become a better reader or writer. I talk about the need to become more skillful writers and the need to be able to comprehend increasingly more complex texts. I encourage the students to apply the strategies I teach them to their work in other subjects. By explaining the usefulness of the strategies, my wish is that students will decide they can use the strategies to have more success in school.

Finally, sometimes students tell me about issues outside of class or school and how they think these issues are beyond their control and are impacting their in-school performance. When this happens, I try to reason with students and suggest strategies they can choose to use, so they feel more in control. If, for example, a student is distracted in class by concerns that don't involve the class, I'll point out that for the time in class, he or she can choose to forget about the worries and concentrate on the activities before him or her. Or, if a student complains to me that disruptions at home are preventing him or her from completing work, I'll suggest going to the library or the after-school study center. And I'll ask the student if he or she is making the best use of study hall time during the school day.

It appears undesirable for students to think their success in school is largely dependent on forces outside of themselves. Unfortunately, it's likely that a portion of our students comes to school each day with this belief. Given the powerful influence students' locus of control orientation can have on their lives, it seems reasonable for teachers to work towards pulling students in the direction of an internal locus of control over academics. And fortunately, teachers may be able to have this impact just through mindfulness of how they communicate with their students.