Money for Good Grades and Other Myths about Motivating Kids: Strategies for Parents & Teachers

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Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

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Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

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I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Barbara Blackburn. Dr. Blackburn is an independent consultant focusing on rigor. She works with schools and school districts around the world to help them increase rigor in every classroom. And her new book is Rigor in Your Classroom, a Toolkit for Teachers.

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And now, our feature presentation.

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Dr. Blackburn, welcome to the show.

[00:42] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, thank you, Justin. I really appreciate it. Please call me Barbara.

[00:45] SPEAKER_02:

Will do. And we've known each other for a while, and I'm honored to have you as a guest on Principal Center Radio. And I was really impressed to pick up your new book, Rigor in the Classroom, and see just what a comprehensive toolkit it is. Can you talk to us a little bit about what led you to publish this book, this toolkit, And kind of what your thinking was as you put it together.

[01:09] SPEAKER_00:

Well, this is my fifth book on rigor. And I had two for leaders and then three for teachers. And one of the things that came out of my workshops and the emails I would receive and feedback from my monthly newsletter was just give us more ideas. We love what we've read. We just want more. And so this became that.

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It is just idea after idea after idea of how to increase rigor in the classroom. And so for principals, it's a great way to have some ideas to share with teachers and also to know the kinds of things to look for in the classroom. And then for teachers, of course, it's just a database of ideas that they can use throughout the year.

[01:45] SPEAKER_02:

And it really is a comprehensive resource in terms of different instructional strategies. As a middle school teacher, if I think back on all of the professional development that I ever experienced, there is an incredible amount that I've simply forgotten that I was exposed to because I never really developed the habit of using all of these different techniques or different questioning strategies. And I really appreciate the way you've presented those concisely and clearly so that if a teacher is looking for a particular strategy, they know how to pull that out. They know exactly where they can find it. And it's not a two-hour read to learn about one strategy.

[02:26] SPEAKER_00:

No, no. In fact, they are very quick, you know, tops two minutes kind of read to get a strategy and be able to use it. And they're very simple. They're things like if you're introducing a topic with teachers or with your students for a teacher to create a Web page. adapting a real web page and created and include several factual errors and have the students actually review the web page looking for the mistakes. And so just a simple idea like that increases the rigor because instead of just telling students the information, they actually have to search and figure out what's not correct and then correct it.

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So there are ideas like that that are all the way through the book.

[03:04] SPEAKER_02:

Right. And I was impressed that a lot of the tools that are included in the book are tools for our own understanding, for thinking about rigor. And I think we're all familiar with Bloom's taxonomy and Webb's depth of knowledge and some similar frameworks. Could you talk about some of the other kind of paradigms on rigor that you included as tools in the book?

[03:27] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think the main one that people may not be as aware of is the cognitive rigor matrix, which actually overlays blooms and webs. And it's a very interesting tool to help with planning for teachers and to help really design lessons and to design instructional activities that are rigorous. And I find that not as many people know about it. particularly teachers. I find that policymakers know more about it because of the research base it came out of. But that's a really good tool for teachers, and it may just be something that they're simply unaware of.

[03:59] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And I think we hear about these different tools that get tossed around, but it's really nice to see them all in one place and see them kind of side by side and compared with each other because I think that really helps us sort through what we're trying to accomplish and really get some clarity.

[04:17] SPEAKER_00:

And that's really what the design was. It was to make it very easy for teachers to look at different things, to learn about some things maybe that they already knew and just were refreshed on, but also to learn some new things. And so, for example, I gave a lot of ideas about formative assessment. And one that's very popular with teachers is four corners because there is some multiple choice kind of review that goes on in classrooms these days to prepare for standardized testing. And it's very boring just to go over the multiple choice question. So in four corners, the students actually go to a corner of the room based on whether they chose A, B, C or D.

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And then there's a class discussion of the question and answer, and then students have the opportunity to move. And you're able to really see how students understand the question and the answers. And so simple things like that make a big difference in the classroom, and teachers can just take it and use it immediately.

[05:12] SPEAKER_02:

Barbara, I was thinking about how this book could be useful for principals and coaches, and I think we've all, as instructional leaders, been in that position where you know someone needs something from you, and maybe they need a lot of support over a period of time, but it's not always easy to think about precisely where to start, to be able to say, here's what you can try today that would be helpful. and provide some resources and help them get started without making it kind of a huge, complicated mess. And as I was flipping through rigor in your classroom, the toolkit that you've published, that's kind of the number one way that I thought that I would use this book as an instructional leader. And did you put it together with instructional leaders in mind or just with teachers in mind?

[06:03] SPEAKER_00:

I did have leaders in mind. There's a parallel book called Rigor in Your School, a toolkit for leaders. So that has all the leadership strategies in it. So this one is not specific to leadership. But I did think about that if you're coaching teachers, that you do need ideas. And so the chapters are broken down by just instructional strategies, questioning strategies, dealing with standards.

[06:27]

giving support for students so that, for example, if I'm coaching a teacher and where they're really struggling is with scaffolding, then there's a chapter on that so that you can pull from those ideas. I think for a principal, it's a really good way when a teacher says, you're telling me to increase the rigor, but I don't know what you mean, to show them very practically what that means. And so I think it's very helpful with that. The other piece that is in here that I think that is particularly helpful for leaders is I would say coaches or principals, depending on who has this instructional responsibility. But there's a chapter called Extend Your Reach, and it's about working with parents. working with administrators, working with co-teaching situations.

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And so it's all about working with adults. And I think that that really makes a difference. For example, one of the pieces I just did with a group of principals was a rigor tip sheet for parents and how to help parents understand what rigor is. And so the tools in that chapter, I think, are particularly helpful for leaders.

[07:29] SPEAKER_02:

And I love one of the kind of anecdotes you share toward the end of the book about a teacher who came to one of your workshops and implemented some of the strategies that you recommended and then got kind of a not so great evaluation from her principal afterward. Can you share that story with us?

[07:48] SPEAKER_00:

Sure. I was actually doing a workshop and one of the activities that I recommend is using a question matrix, which has been around since the 70s. But it's basically Bloom's taxonomy in a grid and they're questioning prompts. And what I recommend is that you run those off on cardstock, cut them apart, put them in a bag, use them as a game where the students draw out a question prompt. and have to create a question about what they've just learned. It's a review activity.

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And it really shifts the ownership to students. They're having to create the questions instead of just coming up with the answers, which is much more rigorous. And so it's a really great, not only rigorous activity, but motivating and engaging to students. And I had a teacher come up immediately after the session, and she said, I did this exact activity and was marked down by my administrator for not being rigorous enough. And what I recommended was that she go back and have a conversation and just ask the question, why didn't you think this was rigorous? Because she had not asked that question before.

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And I said, you know, then you can have the conversation. I was in a workshop on rigor. This was what they recommended. This is why the presenter said it was rigorous. What do you think about that? And she went back and had that conversation with her administrator, and it ended up with the evaluation being changed.

[09:02]

And it was just a lack of understanding between her and the administrator of what rigor really looked like in the classroom. And she did not have the ability at that point to articulate exactly why the activity was rigorous. She just knew it was, but she didn't know why.

[09:17] SPEAKER_02:

Well, and I can imagine how productive that conversation was, and I think how much trust it probably built between that teacher and administrator. First of all, for the teacher to know that she would be listened to if she did present a case for why that activity was rigorous for her students, and for the principal to establish that trust and strengthen that relationship by listening.

[09:42] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, absolutely. I really admire the administrator role. for being willing to listen, understand, and then change the evaluation. And basically to say, you know, I made a mistake. I think that's a big step for an administrator to take and one that really does build trust. I think one of my concerns, and it's why I write all of my books on rigor, is that so many people simply don't understand what rigor is, Justin.

[10:04]

They think it's doubling homework or just doing more or making it harder. And rigor is really about raising the expectation level, but also balancing that with support. Because anytime we raise the expectations, we need to raise support. And then insisting that students demonstrate their learning at high levels. And there's really a blend of all of that. So it's not as simple as just saying, well, I'm going to give them 10 math problems instead of five.

[10:31]

And that's going to make it more rigorous. That's simply not true. If they can't do five, they can't do 10.

[10:36] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And I think in the same way, we often approach rigor or really any kind of effective practice from, I think, a little bit too much of a checklist perspective. As administrators, as instructional leaders, we want to go in and we want to see that people are doing effective things. We want to see that people are doing the right things. But if we approach that with a very kind of binary clipboard and checklist approach, attitude, I think it's very easy to miss the substance of what's really going on. So I really enjoyed that story from your book about the teacher who was doing a rigorous activity, but not all of the questions were at the highest level of Bloom's taxonomy.

[11:16]

There were factual recall questions, and including factual recall questions in your lesson doesn't make it not rigorous.

[11:25] SPEAKER_00:

Right, it's just where do you go from there? And so the blend was what made it rigorous. And even with the factual questions, the students were really having to think and come up with that information. So questioning is one of those interesting things, Justin, that from a leadership perspective, we pay so much attention to is the teacher asking higher order questions? Is the teacher asking higher order questions? And we miss some pieces.

[11:49]

For example, are they doing a lower level question to lead to a higher level question? Are they doing a lower level question to ask for evidence for that? Or where they found the information, which is a little bit higher level. But also, too often, we pay attention to the question the teacher's asking and forget to look at the response the student is giving. For example, one of the patterns I see when I do walkthroughs with principals is teachers asking higher order questions but accepting lower level answers. Well, that's not rigorous either.

[12:16]

So I think it's much more complex than we make it out to be sometimes.

[12:21] SPEAKER_02:

Really well said. Really well said. So the book is Rigor in Your Classroom, a Toolkit for Teachers. And as Barbara mentioned, there is another book called A Toolkit for Leaders. And I think both are very powerful resources for any school that wants to increase rigor in the classroom. Barbara, if people want to find out more about your work and maybe read some articles and learn about all the different resources that you offer, where can they find you online?

[12:51] SPEAKER_00:

They can find me at www.barbarablackburnonline.com. And there are just a wealth of free resources on there, Justin. There's a beginner's guide to rigor under the rigor tab. If you click free resources and articles, there's probably 25 articles for teachers and a special series of about 12 articles that are just for leaders on our leadership model that I write about.

[13:15]

So plenty of free resources. So visit the website.

[13:18] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Barbara, thank you so much for joining us for Principal Center Radio. This has been a true treat to speak with you, and it's been a privilege to look through the toolkit for teachers on rigor. Thank you so much, and have a great day.

[13:32] SPEAKER_00:

You too, Justin.

[13:34] SPEAKER_01:

And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[13:38] SPEAKER_02:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what can we do to promote rigor in our classrooms? Now, obviously, having a broad repertoire of strategies for promoting rigor is essential. But I think the way that we do walkthroughs and the way that we provide feedback to teachers also has a big impact on the results that we get. And we heard a pretty funny story from Barbara about how that can kind of go wrong when we don't see enough of a lesson and we don't understand how the lower level questions that teachers may be asking can build up to higher level and more rigorous questions than we can kind of get the wrong impression. So one thing I want to encourage you to do is set yourself up to look for the right things and to ask yourself the right questions when you're in classrooms. And one very practical way you can do that is to design the right kind of walkthrough feedback form.

[14:31]

If your feedback form is kind of checklist-y, if it's got all these questions that simply ask you to tally how many lower level and higher level questions you see, that's not going to necessarily lend itself to the kind of conversation That's going to help the teacher grow and help you learn what you need to, to be an effective instructional leader. If you haven't taken the 21 day instructional leadership challenge yet, I want to encourage you to sign up at instructional leadership challenge.com. And I'll walk you through this process in a lot more detail. I believe that one of the key elements of high performance instructional leadership is making a habit of getting into classrooms every day and providing high quality feedback to our teachers. Learn more at instructional leadership challenge.com.

[15:18] Announcer:

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