Schools as Ecosystems

Does the concept of hysteresis apply to public schools? If so, caution must be taken when altering school communities: http://bit.ly/wRaotM

In my thinking, and writing, I attempt to avoid categorization. Yet deliberate eclecticism detracts from blog stats and Klout scores. O well

If we can grow rice at high yields without using chemicals, can we raise student achievement w/o harming communities? http://buff.ly/XfRpbN

Maybe this is an inane thought, but what if NOLA ed improvement is due solely to physical dispersion, rather than charter conversion?

@mandercorn Meaning, that the simple mechanism of dispersing students irregardless of geographical boundaries (hence, diversity) is key

@mandercorn Rather than the (I think misguided) common inference that charter schools are inherently more effective

We are entering an era of increasing turbulence. Climate, economy, and politics. Chaos and complexity must be understood across domains

Too many teachers operate from the perspective of "my kids can't," rather than "I don't yet know how to." This is a fundamental shift in mindset that leads to continuous improvement.

Likewise, too many administrators operate under "our teachers can't," rather than "I need to figure out how to better support them."

I'm studying the topic of acoustics in schools. Learning about signal-to-noise ratios and reverberation times. What stands out to me the most is that standards for acoustics are not compulsory, and older schools most definitely were not designed with acoustics in mind.

Acoustical treatments are not prohibitively expensive, but I have never heard them discussed, even in a school with an open classroom plan that makes learning especially challenging. Why would we make it harder for our most vulnerable students to learn?

This follows a theme on most matters of the physical environment for learning. They are of secondary, cosmetic concern. Yet research (and commonsense) is quite clear on the impact of factors such as acoustics, temperature, greenery, fresh air, and lighting.

I spoke recently with a pre-k teacher of students with autism. She can speak directly to the influence of the physical environment. One student would 'stem' off the fluorescent lighting. When she got light covers that removed flickering, the stemming ceased.

I am not a person with autism, but I cringe when I'm in most public school hallways during passing periods. The reverberating noise is deafening. Just think of our most sensitive students experiencing this every single day for years upon years of their most formative period.

Some problems with the trite takeaways from this study. Territoriality and sitting in the same seat may lead more to complacency, rather than learning. Real learning requires some discomfort. https://qz.com/1349508/ via @qz

Thread. Some thoughts on the important new study from Chetty et al. which shows that where a child grows up matters—down to the micro-level https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/upshot/maps-neighborhoods-shape-child-poverty.html @emilymbadger @qdbui

Why? Because if you live on a lower floor, you're exposed to more chronic noise. http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1974-08197-001 Such findings have been replicated for sources like proximity to airports, trains, etc. Growing up with constant exposure to a source of pollution impacts outcomes.

There's a few points from other research to add to Chetty's data: a 1973 study of the Bridge Apartments in the Heights—a quartet of high rises bestride the highway that leads to the GWB—found that literally what floor a child lives on determines reading ability.

As part of my job working with schools, I take buses and walk all across the Bronx, from the East River to Westchester Creek, from Woodstock to University Heights. And it's endlessly fascinating to me just how much of a difference a block can make.

Another area of research, which Chetty et al.'s confirms, is the impact of the historical legacy of a neighborhood. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322679394_Towards_Conceptualizing_and_Empirically_Examining_Legacy_of_Place_An_Exploratory_Consideration_of_Historic_Neighborhood_Characteristics_on_Contemporary_Dropout_Behavior We have to not only look at the present characteristics of a community, but it's past.

There's so many other variables of a neighborhood that have been demonstrated to influence health and learning, such as greenery. A longitudinal study in 2016 found that green space in urban neighborhoods in So Cal reduced aggressive behavior in teens. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27343886

Because the very floor in a particular building that a child is raised in, the particular room in a school where the child is taught how to read, can influence outcomes. It's that specific. Environment and context matters.

So it will be interesting to see how these and other factors are rediscovered in Chetty et al.'s data. Such factors compound, which is why it is so complex. But look first and foremost at quality of life factors. Then look at the history of the building, the block, the zone.

A school can adopt standards-aligned, high quality curriculum for various subjects but remain completely incoherent. Literacy is the responsibility of a whole school. @chingos @Standards_Work @chiefsforchange @mpolikoff @EdReports https://schoolecosystem.org/2018/11/03/supporting-the-development-of-clear-and-coherent-literacy-instruction-in-schools/

Please read this @NewYorker piece on noise pollution. And then please think also about noise pollution and it's effect on learning. Some our school environments are the worst acoustical design there is.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/13/is-noise-pollution-the-next-big-public-health-crisis/amp#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s

I work with one "open classroom" school where teachers are literally shouting at their students.

Think about it for a second. Our instruction relies upon hearing what is said. And yet in many classrooms students can't hear 25% of what a teacher says.

It's almost like we've designed some schools to make it as difficult to hear as we could. This only puts our most vulnerable students further behind.

A perfect example, just to illustrate: think of a typical public school cafeteria or stairwell. The sound reverberates. Noise begets noise once kids are in such poorly designed acoustical spaces.

We’re now in the business of building daily habits, not just in keeping kids in a chair and delivering content. https://schoolecosystem.org/2020/03/18/remote-learning-social-distancing/

I've gotten into more than few small spats here on Twitter about the nitty gritty of things: what is research-based practice, whether onset-rime is worth teaching, etc. It's all in service of the learning. There's so much more we need to research and figure out in practice.

I've been trying out The PAST phonemic awareness screener and other tools, and sharing pieces of my learning with various small audiences. There's been ups and downs on this journey. It's a tough burden to ask any individual teacher to shoulder, I've found. It's been piecemeal.

I've been on a learning trajectory since that post, reading Louisa Moats, Jeanne Chall, Words Their Way, Alfred Tatum, and many posts and research papers. I've been tapping into the learning of our Universal Literacy coaches, my excellent critical friends here on Twitter....

At the beginning of this school year I wrote about reading, and all the things I've been learning that I didn't know before.

Much in our world has changed since then.

But what we need to do to equip our children to read has not.

https://schoolecosystem.org/2019/08/22/learning-how-kids-learn-to-read/

Please welcome our Bronx ELA Liaisons from District 9. We want to build a shared understanding of the science of reading, culturally responsive teaching, and what can be done within an MTSS model to disrupt and invert the literacy outcomes of our district. #BronxELAchampions

I'm so excited to begin this collective learning journey within my district. We need champions for literacy for our students who are unafraid to confront the data, have a deep love for the communities we serve, and are willing to fight against norms that aren't working for all.

After the shift to remote learning, without the exhaustion of a daily commute on various buses and trains and the time I usually spend in individual schools and classrooms, I've discovered an opportunity to bring teachers in schools across my district together around this.

Just "visited" an elementary school doing solid live instruction each day and keeping their kids engaged and learning by working cohesively as a team. It isn't about synchronous vs. asynchronous instruction. It's about "by any means possible," people.

How about we use this time of school closure to invest in improving school buildings to ensure healthy indoor environments? To provide adequate access to natural light, install HEPA air filters, and add acoustic dampening to reduce noise?

I was going to write a book about the impact of the physical environment on learning, and then life happened, so I'm sharing this chapter on the importance of acoustics instead. https://schoolecosystem.org/2020/09/06/the-influence-of-acoustics-on-learning/

Here's another chapter of that never-to-be-finished book: The Influence of Greenery on Learning. Inequitable access to greenspace (and clean air) should be one of the defining issues of this moment. https://schoolecosystem.org/2020/09/10/the-influence-of-greenery-on-learning/

As schools and districts now shift to figuring out how to best spend the federal windfall, they would be well advised to invest in acoustical treatment, more access to greenery, and better air purification. These will reap benefits for the long haul. https://wp.me/p47B5n-13T

Look, it just needs to be said sometimes as a friendly reminder:

A school can have evidence-based programs in place and get horrific results.

A school can use all the fuzzy stuff and get strong results.

We undervalue execution and coherency and organizational culture.

I'm saying this as much to remind myself, as someone strongly committed to research and evidence. I just have seen too many contradictions in practice.

Leadership and commitment and a shared purpose drives excellence, not just whether something on paper is "aligned" or not.

"There is no silver bullet, no easy fix, no technological potion that will magically enable all kids to learn the preferred civic, academic, and social wisdom we’d wish them to ingest." Unless, of course, it's decodables and sound walls. (J/king) http://schoolecosystem.org/2021/07/16/what-will-it-take-to-improve-our-schools/

I dipped my toes into complex adaptive systems thinking on my Schools & Ecosystems blog for a few years, but mostly in relation to physical and social environments of schools -- and just discovered a conceptual bridge to language and literacy! #geekmoment

You began to attune your budding awareness to the prosody of human speech. You began to distinguish the voices of different speakers and between the sounds of different languages.

Language learning begins almost the moment we can hear or feel or move. When you were in the womb, your mother’s heartbeat, sonorous voice, and burbling digestive system bathed you in constant aural stimulation and sparked the rapid development of neural connections in your brain

When our children first come into our schools, whether in pre-K or in kindergarten, they already come with a wide range of unique experiences with language. However, not all have had the same level of exposure to the language of written text . . .

We are born to communicate with and learn from one another, to gesture, to imitate, to assign names and labels, to array things and events and actions into discourse. This amazing ability to learn and communicate is our universal birthright.

After we have entered into the world and the umbilical cord has been cut, language is the interstitial tissue that binds our interactions to the people and objects around us. We cry and wave, we grab and we coo, we point and laugh and babble and shriek.

The academic term for this type of language is “decontextualized” or “abstract” language, and children are exposed to this language whenever an adult reads books aloud to them and talks with them about what they read (“extra-textual talk”).

. . . , a language that tends to be more syntactically complex, with greater use of specialized and infrequent words, greater requirements for inferencing, and glimpses into realms of inquiry that lie beyond the immediate and concrete.

. . . with challenging concepts and ideas. Frankly, I don't think we leverage the power of read-alouds frequently nor effectively enough across our classrooms, and across content areas. #language #readalouds #sharedreading

. . . most especially as disciplinary language grows ever more specialized. The dense yet rich informational texts of social studies and science are ripe for read-alouds, providing opportunities for students to hear complex written text read fluently and engage intellectually. .

These early shared reading experiences improve later reading outcomes and motivation to read. But shared reading shouldn't stop once kids have learned to decode. Read-alouds should continue all the way up through secondary . . .

Driving a car doesn't make you any more important than a person trying to cross a street or biking on the side. But it does make you far more dangerous. Why do we design roads to elevate the lives of those in cars, and more dangerous to the lives of everyone else?

A school is defined by the very place in which it sits, in that particular community, within that particular state and local policy context, in that specific time.  https://schoolecosystem.wordpress.com/2021/07/16/what-will-it-take-to-improve-our-schools/

Reminding my own self of this again. It's an inmate tendency of our system and of our humanity to add more to try and solve problems, rather than pare down. https://x.com/mandercorn/status/1385712183594700802

The hardest work we do as educators and leaders is when we honestly reflect on whether the lessons or sessions we facilitate have landed in the learning we planned and anticipated.

Much of the time, the honest answer is: not quite. This is why this work is so hard.

The endorphin rush of a well planned and delivered window into eternity is well worth the painstaking chiseling of our shallow egos.

But also, why it's so fulfilling and why those who dedicate their lives to this endeavor so often stick with it well beyond "retirement." Learning and systemic change are mostly incremental, until those little avalanches, those heretofore invisible tipping points, are achieved.

A tendency is to jump into immediate action, put in place some singular practice or program or system, and then clap one another on the back and start a new school year without ever having addressed the underlying root of problems that prevent universal success.

One the one hand, teams need to slow down to do deeper analysis and planning at the systems-level. They need to check their biases and assumptions, collect more data, more clearly problems they can change, and refine their theories and designs for action.

Been thinking a lot lately about the balance and tension between systems-level work and classroom-level work within MTSS in a school and district.

A brief 🧵 👇

On the other, teachers, staff, and students need immediate and ongoing guidance and supports across the school community and in classrooms.

Navigating and carrying school teams through these competing tensions seems to be a key aspect of improving outcomes.

We need to slow down teams to speed up instructional efficacy.

Big cities increase segregation because they offer more niches for self-selective interaction.

But the built environment can foster greater diversity of interaction.

Top places of mixing: performing arts centers, stadiums, and theme parks.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.07414

As we all know, our schools are highly segregated due to marginalization, politics, policies, fear, physical distance, and more.

Given such circumstances, in what ways can we work to build more bridges between districts, schools, and neighborhoods, both virtual and physical?

He was turned forward into the next day so much I had trouble seeing him clearly until his fire was gone.

I look at my son now, who explodes like kindling when he doesn’t get his way. I must be distant from my own demands to give him space to catch. (2/3)

It takes a death to bring to life how little I have seen beyond the tip of my own needs.

My father’s discipline was to deny himself any warmth that could not be banked towards the future. (1/3)

I must be better than who I was.

We are never enough for each other until we are far enough away.

It’s too late to control. This is the place where our hearts will begin. (3/3)

Simple messages and concrete models are important for laying the foundations to advance growth and broaden reach.

Ultimately, we need to be able to carry people into a space of nuance and complexity and divergence. Not to such a level that all is relative and nothing is essential. But also some level of quiescence can be a means to move all forward in the long run.

A seed carries the kernel of complexity, which when provided with adequate space, time, love, and attention, flowers and branches multifaceted into the sky.

But growth can be easily stunted when the conditions (leadership, policies, resources) change too rapidly to secure those foundations, or the foundations are never agreed upon or actively sabotaged.

It starts with simplicity, but it carries from the beginning a hungry tension that edges towards the as-of-yet undefined. It emerges. It adapts. It is beyond any one person's limited capacity.

Our messages, however simple, must allow for these future multitudes.

That generous, generative space of complexity, the level we want to get people on a team or in an organization to, is at the same level as water. Dynamic, flowing, accepting of all -- and relentless in its drive to flourishing.

The apocalyptic scenes from NYC brought back memories of fleeing our apartment in South Lake Tahoe from the Angora fire in 2007. It felt like that was a beginning to a neverending, everexpanding fire season in California, which now is encompassing everywhere. https://t.co/f83obODFm9

This is the world we are bequeathing to our children. For what? So we can have the convenience of driving gigantic SUVs by ourselves and having products shipped to us within a day? So we can have giant data centers so we can upload endless video streams of our forgetting?

There is a fertile topsoil we are born with in our brains, imprinted by the interplay of sights and sounds and movement of those who interact with us. http://languageliteracy.blog/2023/09/02/the-inner-scaffold-for-language-and-literacy/

I'm starting all over with a new blog.

& I'm starting off reposting where it began for all my musings on ed, 13 years ago as a new teacher in a 5th grade 12:1:1 classroom in the Bronx, with an analogy between growing healthy food and teaching children

https://languageandliteracy.blog/

Next, we grow this idea to the concept of a school as an ecosystem

https://write.as/manderson/public-schools-as-ecosystems-part-i

Then, we keep expanding that metaphor, considering the impact of school culture on learning and well-being.

https://languageandliteracy.blog/public-schools-as-ecosystems-part-ii

Yes! And another related point. . . all too often, we put things up for other adults, rather than for our students. Rule of thumb: If what is up on your wall will not be referred to by your students in any upcoming lessons, then take it down. https://schoolecosystem.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/what-is-on-your-classroom-walls-why/ https://x.com/rodjnaquin/status/1753087642223116774

Something I haven't seen flushed out empirically yet in examinations of scaling: Can we deliberately scale up good things, leveraging power scaling laws while simultaneously.and inversely scaling down bad things? Would love to read more on this.