Talent Is Overrated--Part Three

In Parts One and Two, we explored how providing all members of an organization--not just an elite few--with models of excellence followed by deliberate practice moves the entire school upward in achievement. We also discussed how we are able to push ourselves to greater levels of performance by continually examining how our instructional practices influence our students' achievement.

In Part Three, we need to identify exactly how we can improve our performance as educators, and by extension how we can help our students grow as learners.

Colvin states in his book Talent Is Overrated that, "the most important self-regulatory skill that top performers use during their work is self-observation."  Top performers in all fields--sports, business, industry, and education--never blame external forces for a lack of results, but look to themselves and how their methods/strategies/habits should change in the future for better results.

For example, let's say a teacher is compiling end-of-quarter grades for the new freshmen, and notices that students' performance is much lower for this group than last year's freshmen.  What separates a top performing teacher from a poor or mediocre teacher?

A low-performing teacher's self-speak (or worse yet, he/she says these things aloud in the lounge) includes statements such as:

• "If they'd just pay better attention during lecture..."
• "Well, they warned me this group has always been low achieving..."
• "Tomorrow I'm implementing more rules..."
• "I guess some of these kids will just take it again next year..."
• "What do I expect?  These kids' parents were the same when I had them in school..."

On the other hand, a top-performing teacher (or aide, or principal, or any other person who works with students) has a different voice, and says things to his/herself that focus not on the end product, but on identifying the weak points in the process that led to these results, then on specific methods to improve on those elements for next time:

• "These grades should be higher, and I notice that the boys performed better in labs than the girls.  How can I change my instruction to address this discrepancy?"
• "A lack of content vocabulary is probably the key to some of these low grades.  I should have spotted this earlier--this quarter I'll change my quizzes so I will know much more quickly how they're doing."
• "Formative assessments.  I need to monitor these students' ups and downs more closely, and the best way to do that is to change up the routine and create shorter, more frequent assessments so we keep our eye on the ball."

Notice that the low- to mediocre-performing educator is a blamer:  whatever goes wrong is due to factors beyond his/her control.  In their mind this provides an excuse to keep doing what they're doing (even though it's not working well) by identifying a scapegoat for less-than-desirable performance.

The high-performing educator, on the other hand, focuses improvement strategies where they belong:  on him/herself.  Not on outside factors beyond his/her control (poverty, student behaviors, parental influences, building policies), but instead focuses his/her efforts where the most rapid and substantial change can occur:  within his/her own practices and behaviors.

An Introduction to Project - Based Learning

Just give me 4 minutes of your time, teachers, to share with you an idea that is custom-made for our 1:1 environment.

Talent Is Overrated, Part Two

To continue the thinking from last week's blog, I made a list today of all the jobs I've ever had.  Quite an interesting path that led me to being a secondary school principal today:

1. picked rocks
2. sprayed and walked beans
3. paper route
4. summer childcare
5. nursing home laundry aide
6. short order cook
7. computer parts assembler
8. cookie manufacturing
9. nut processing (yep, we bagged peanuts, cashews, etc. 50 lbs at a time; graveyard shift)
10. press helper
11. fast food cook
12. custodian
13. library aide
14. toy store shelves stocker
15. proofreader
16. office cleaning
17. photographer
18. county conservation worker
19. soup factory worker
20. teacher
21. adjunct professor
22. principal

Yes, they're listed in chronological order, starting at the age of 13.  No one I worked for or with would have ever said that I performed excellently at any of these jobs.  I did OK at most, and well at some, but was I a world class short order cook?  A prize-winning photographer?  No.

Why not?  As Colvin states in his book Talent Is Overrated, I did well enough to get by, maybe get some praise now and then from clients or supervisors, but never did I engage in the serious deliberate practice it takes to perform excellently.  This is how most of us spend our entire lives:  doing well enough to keep doing things at the same level of performance.  I was simply OK at the things I did.

Actually, I take that back:  as a proofreader, I excelled.  I worked in college for a company that produced wedding announcements, wedding programs, and other special-occasion products.  My job, and the job of others in my department, was to compare what the customer told us they wanted to see printed with what our typists actually created.  I spotted mistakes for a living.  And I was the best in my department, according to the indicators the company used to define success, for the two years I was there.

Why?  First, a rigorous training program.  It only lasted a week or so, but through failure after failure, I learned what it took to accurately and quickly (speed mattered, too) spot mistakes in spelling, font, point size, etcetera.  Second, constant feedback.  We knew every week how many items we had proofed, how many "send-backs" we received (when another department spotted an error I missed), and how many customer complaints we had.  Do we see this happening in our teacher preparation programs?  Is this how our teacher and principal performance evaluations are designed?

This continuous flow of achievement data allowed me to see how I was performing, from outside observers.  I could easily measure and track the quality of my work--this factored directly into periodic pay raises (or reprimands).  Progress could be monitored, and I knew the rewards of my hard work and deliberate practice.  How do we provide this for students?  And in much more profound ways than in giving them lots of tests--this is NOT meaningful achievement data.  As educators we need to take much more into account than end-of-unit tests. 

In teaching, we are able to push ourselves to greater levels of performance by continually examining how our instructional practices influence our students' achievement.   In school leadership, the results of our work can be difficult to measure, but every two years I ask my staff to evaluate my performance.  Using this data to think hard about my own effectiveness can be difficult:  no one likes to read anonymous evaluations that may be unflattering.  But that's what produces results--revealing our weaknesses and engaging in deliberate practice to improve on those habits and methods that aren't working.  In what ways could this principle be applied in our work in education? 

Next week, we'll be provide specific examples of how these concepts can impact student achievement by influencing our own effectiveness as educators.

Talent Is Overrated, Part One

I'm reading a book titled Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, and the premise of this book is that "you don't need a one-in-a-million natural gift. Better performance, and even world-class performance, is closer than (we) think."

He argues that neither a high IQ nor the presence of natural gifts create excellence.  Instead it's something he calls deliberate practice, a concept he illustrates in full detail.  For those of you who read my blog and work with me, you're welcome to borrow the book when I'm finished.

Anyway, I'm only into Chapter 3, How Smart Do You Have To Be?, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by the section in which Colvin discusses the impact of IQ on Grand Masters of chess.  "Why in the world would you care about Grand Masters of chess?" you might ask.

Because immediately I began making parallels in my mind between what made these men great at what they do and the possible implications for our students.

Colvin shows the results of study after study that prove Grand Masters of chess have IQs no greater than yours or mine.  What they do have, however, is hours and hours of rigorous, deliberate, creative practice that allows them to truly know the multiple possible moves of their opponents, and the multiple possible moves they might make in response.

Implications for us in education?  Take a school's sports teams, for example.  When a coach decides to provide an opportunity for his team to attend an enrichment activity (a sports camp), he is providing a series of models of excellent performance.  However, if those models and strategies are not then consistently and rigorously applied in practice again and again in preparation for each game, the camp is a complete waste of resources (time, money, energy, etc.)  Why?  Without repeatedly engaging in practicing excellence, a player's qualities of excellence atrophy and diminish over time.

Worse yet, how often in athletics do we provide these enrichment opportunities to only a few of our athletes rather than many?  If thirty students are out for a sport, then I would argue that thirty ought to go to that camp, not just the top few.  The logic is clear--if only six go to the camp, the performance gap WIDENS between those players and the other twenty-four.  Six players become much better and learn new skills, but twenty-four do not.

Providing all members of an organization--not just an elite few--with models of excellence followed by deliberate practice is the only way the entire organization can move not just forward, but upward, as well.  Moving forward is what most of us do every day--and we never really break out of the orbit of "being alright at" what we do.  We'll end our season with a few wins, maybe even making it all the way to an even split between wins and losses.

But to achieve excellence, and to achieve it consistently over time, we need to move both forward AND upward.

Next week:  how do these principles apply to the other important work we do in schools?

"Why would we grade their homework?"

At the ACT conference in Ames yesterday, I again had the privilege to learn from Sarah Brown Wessling, Iowa Teacher of the Year and National Teacher of the Year. And, of course, she's an English teacher!

One statement she made in her presentation stood out to me above the others. She was recounting a trip she made to Finland, and a conversation she had with another high school teacher there. Sharing stories about frustrating students, outstanding students, and students in between, the Finnish teacher was expressing disappointment that some of her students weren't turning in homework.

Sarah responded by saying that, yes, in the US some of our students don't turn in homework either, making it very difficult to grade.

Interestingly, the Finnish teacher asked with a confused look on her face, "Why would you grade the homework when that is the student's time to make mistakes?"

The gravity of that statement has stayed with me, and I suspect it will stay with me for a very long time. Why would we want to grade a student's practice? This article illustrates the concept of focusing on summative assessments for grades, while allowing homework to count only as practice toward an excellent performance on that summative assessment.

I welcome your comments.