Zack is my youngest and has always been a very sweet and caring boy. He is known to be a great friend, one who always makes sure the new kids in class are included and one who loves when everyone can play and get along together. He loves playing sports and winning, and most importantly, his coaches have always commended him on his âcoachabilityâ and sportsmanship, which makes us so proud. He leaves me sweet notes or sends me his favorite GIFs when I travel. Zack recently made the leap from binge-reading Captain Underpants to devouring the Harry Potter series and determining that he is a Hufflepuff, whose characteristics include a strong sense of justice, loyalty, patience, and a propensity for hard work.
Zack also loves to solve puzzles and has an incredible knack for numbers. He has always been a builder and loves his LEGO sets. He can sit for extended periods of time with an intense focus on puzzles, projects he values, or Minecraft world-creating. His independence and confidence in his creations is a beautiful thing.
I am sharing this because, like all parents, I think the world of my son, but also because I want you to have the context of who my son is and how I see him before I share how he was seen in school. This is his midyear progress report from second grade.
Although Zack is funny, curious, and caring, among so many other things, he wasnât always recognized for those traits in school. What was measured and valued didnât create a holistic account of his strengths and challenges. He had mostly twos (out of four) on his report card in the first marking period, and what is even worse is that we saw his scores decline during the second marking period.
When I looked at a sample of his work, I could certainly make the argument that his work clearly earned those ones and twos. He often wrote one-word answers, and his penmanship was hard to read. The grading and lack of meaningful feedback in the form of a few question marks he received from his teacher confirmed that this type of schooling was certainly not working. And Zack was miserable. He painfully pointed out that although I was working so hard to fix schools, it wasnât working. He looked at me pleadingly and asked, âHow much longer do I have to do this, Mom?â #MomFail
Zack was in a school that was rated very high on conventional metrics based on their exceptional test scores. I also knew his teacher cared about him and all her students. She was working very hard in a system that was designed for an industrial era. The result was often standardization, compliance, isolated content, and the completion of tasks. Like all systems, it was perfectly designed to get the results it got.
What the late Sir Ken Robinson helped me and the world understand through his powerful TED talk âDo Schools Kill Creativity?â is that âone of the roles of education is to awaken and develop the powers of creativity. Instead, what we have is a culture of standardization.â1 It is increasingly clear that we need to honor and develop studentsâ abilities to think differently, solve problems, and navigate new and different situations. We also need to teach and support the development of skills that enable students to develop their own path along with social and emotional intelligence so they can thrive in a constantly changing and unpredictable society. This means we canât structure the learning experiences with a fixed curriculum that is outdated or fails to reflect the complexity of diverse perspectives. We canât be satisfied with merely covering content or meeting standards. Endless possibilities exist to structure learning experiences for students to discover problems to solve, ideas to develop, and feedback to receive on the value of their ideas and products.
A Learner-Centered Environment
Fast-forward to the following school year. Zack came home in the first few weeks and said, âMom, did you know Iâm smart?â I said, âOf course I do, buddy, but what made you realize it?â
He explained, âMiss Hassey gave us a really hard math problem and we all used our own strategies to figure it out. She picked mine to share with the class!â It was a simple and powerful strategy that began to shift his mindset. This validation and encouragement that he had value and could solve problems in ways that made sense to him instead of just completing a worksheet was one of many breakthroughs he experienced as a result of a caring educator who intentionally created a learner-centered environment. His teacher was focused on developing the knowledge, skills, and mindsets of learners and, in doing so, created an equitable learning community that prioritized personalization, learner agency, authentic work, and meaningful contribution.
We saw just how impactful this approach was for Zack during parent-teacher-conference week. Miss Hassey started the conference by providing time for each of us to highlight something we were proud of Zack for. This alone was powerful and gave us an opportunity to celebrate the strengths my son has. Then, Zack led the conference by sharing how he was doing overall in school based on the goals he had discussed with his teacher and classmates, how he was doing socially, and some of his goals in both areas. He then showed us some strategies he had been learning in math and discussed what he was reading and the challenge of finding anything that could compare to Harry Potter. The struggle was real! As he opened his notebook and shared what he had been writing, I could see he was so proud of his work. He looked at us, and I looked at the full pages he had filled. His teacher looked at us, and Zack read his favorite reading response, which he had preselected. As Miss Hassey shared how she had seen Zack improve so much over the past year in his writing, especially with his organization and effort, I could barely keep it together. In fact, I am sitting here in tears as I write this.
We all celebrated his unique gifts, then he proceeded to present a slideshow he had prepared. He talked about how he had grown as a writer, reader, and mathematician. With each slide, he shared the skills heâd learned and his strengths, challenges, and goals. He was articulate, proud, and honest about his next steps as a learner. It was a dramatic shift in his confidence and competence.
After Zack presented his work to us, Miss Hassey shared her assessment of where he was in regard to academic norms on reading, writing, and math, what standards he had mastered, and what he still needed to work on. More importantly, she shared, âZack is a wonderful friend. He jumped right into his new class and has flourished. Zack understands the importance of making others feel included, has a healthy, diverse range of friends, and is considered a good friend by many. Zackâs positive and welcoming spirit is impressive for his age.â In that moment, it was so clear why Zack was flourishing: he had a teacher and a community who saw him for his many gifts, just as we got to see outside of school. To be fair, she also acknowledged his areas for growth. âZack is working on compromising and problem-solving by meeting in the middle of multiple peopleâs points of view.â Yup. She really got him.
I barely held back my tears when I asked him what had changed to make such a dramatic improvement in his writing. He said, âI decided that I really wanted people to be able to read and understand my ideas, so I slowed down and have been trying much harder to organize my ideas.â All attempts to keep it together were a lost cause, and through tears, all I could say was, âI am so proud of you!â but I was feeling so much moreârelieved, hopeful, inspired, and so grateful for his amazing teacher who made the choice to focus on learners and learning first then design her systems, policies, and learning experiences to meet students where they were and foster the unique and special individuals they were becoming.
Every time I tell Zackâs story, people come up to me and say they know someoneâmaybe even their own childâwho has experienced the same thing. This is because the system was designed for standardization. Even though many educators and other highly successful people will say the system worked for them, the reality is we have too many learners who donât feel seen or valued. Too often, these students and families have suffered in silence or without options, thinking there was something wrong with them instead of something wrong with the system. We can and should have many modes to meet learners where they are. We donât need young...
