by Jim Pingel
How well does your faculty use the Power Tools of teaching—retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, and feedback boosts?
There are many books published each year on teaching best practices. Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning is written by two current teachers in a straightforward but compelling manner for the daily practitioner. A quick read, the book is packed with terrific research which ably shows the “whys” for using each tool and the numerous ways and “hows” your teachers can deploy these best practices seamlessly in their classrooms.
There are many juicy tidbits in here that will benefit your instructional coaches and teachers—getting your teachers to think about OUTformation in their teaching rather than INformation, being wary of the illusions of fluency and learning that are commonplace, and so much more. This book makes a terrific workshop book for an entire year, for summer in-servicing, or even for a faculty/instructional coach book club. Read it and raise the bar on teaching and student learning in your school.
I love to read works by embedded reporters or individuals who get complete access on the inside. Such is the case in How the Other Half Learns, where school choice skeptic and critic, Robert Pondiscio, spent a year “on the inside” at Success Academy—the network of controversial charter schools in New York City. In taking an unvarnished look at the way Success Academy goes about educating their students, Pondiscio gives a critical and balanced view of shortcomings and achievements of the school’s approach to student learning. A skilled reporter and writer, Pondiscio makes the reader feel like a fly on the wall in the classroom, in the principal’s office, and at parent meetings for an entire school year. The book is a page turner in this regard, but also because of the research he brings and integrates into the narrative of his book. You feel like you are reading both a novel and a scholarly journal article on the educational debates over school choice at the same time. I especially appreciated how Pondiscio admits that many of his previous criticisms of choice schools were wrong, biased, and based on media distortion. He doesn’t come all the way over the “good” side, but his personal evolution on private schools is interesting to note.
You might be thinking, “That’s nice, but what does the book half to do with Lutheran education or leadership in Lutheran schools?”
There are many reasons a Lutheran administrator and Christian school leaders should read the book. For one, you will appreciate the relentless dedication to a system approach or philosophy of education that the leadership of Success Academy believed in, advocated, and executed. They were bold and relentless in building a school system or approach to education that they believed in and felt truly motivated to bring to fruition. As Lutheran high school leaders, we all can learn from and be inspired by leaders who live their mission seven days a week.
Second, as many of our schools compete against government-run schools and endure the nasty politics that can sometimes accompany the “public education versus private education” wars, this book lays out strong arguments on both sides of that debate through the eyes of people in the trenches. As a parochial school leader, reading this book will help equip you to answer critics of Lutheran or parochial schools in an effective and compelling manner. In fact, one of the revelations of the book is just how much marketing, politicking, salesmanship, and branding Success Academy invests in and partakes of to compete in the education business much like Lutheran schools must do. This book will help you dig deep and mentally prepare some thoughtful arguments for being a Christ-centered school, perhaps in ways you have not thought of previously.
Finally, as I read the book, I was struck by the power of words and mental real estate in building a school culture. Every classroom in a Success Academy school, for example, was named after a college—Harvard, Michigan State, Stanford, etc. Students were “scholars.” Students with behavior issues were “emergency scholars.” Standardized test days were “Slam the Exam” days. There is not enough space to go into all the names and labels they gave all of their educational endeavors, but reading about them in totality really made an impression and made me think: How could Lutheran schools transform or enhance their culture and aspirations with different words, word phrases, labels, and monikers? What word associations and concepts would be “sticky” for faculty, staff, administration, and students and lead to greater student success, learning, and mission fruition? How can we, as God’s instruments, more effectively deploy and integrate God’s Word into the lives of our students and school networks?
This book is about how “the other half learns.” Check it out—you’ll learn a lot too and enjoy a terrific read along the way.
With a plethora of biographies published each year, this recent work is a particularly pertinent for school leaders in an era which purports the importance of innovation, design-thinking, entrepreneurship, and continuous improvement. While the life of Thomas Edison may not be so familiar to most Americans beyond, perhaps, his invention of the light bulb, students of leadership books have often been exposed to his embrace that failure is part of the process to discovery, mastery, or invention. Haven’t we all read that Edison did not fail 24,999 times in bringing the light bulb to fruition but, instead, discovered 24,999 ways the light bulb would not work? The moral of the leadership story: Try and try again! Resilience is a good thing.
The book is a riveting read because a talented and elegant biographer writes about a fascinating historical figure (Edmund Morris passed this year). The Lutheran leader and administrator will find the work stimulating and inspiring as one analyzes Edison’s thinking and how he approached invention and innovation. Moreover, the reader will note the habits and dispositions of an inquisitive, creative mind and futurist. Are there any Edison habits and dispositions which you possess or seek to cultivate?
The bottom line is the book will stimulate your own mind and surely help you to think differently about your current challenges and dilemmas. Indeed, if Edison’s life shows one thing it is that entrepreneurs, creators, and innovators—like leaders—are both born and made.